Mathematics Weblog

A Further Five Numbers

Thursday 25 August 2005 at 12:34 pm | In Articles | Post Comment

BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting another series of programmes on numbers. This week’s programme features Benford’s Law which says that in naturally occurring data (so not random number tables) the number 1 appears as the first digit around 30% of the time, which is not what one would expect. It is used to detect forgeries.

You can listen to the programme at A Further Five Numbers and the rest of the series will look at

The previous two series are also well-worth listening to; they feature and Game Theory. They can be found at Five Numbers and Another Five Numbers

(Thanks to Gooseania)