Over 30% of numbers start with a 1

[Knuckstrike]

Go to any site. Go check your post count. Go check thet view count of your favorite thread. Almost one in every three numbers starts with a 1.
Of the forty most recent threads, 11 have a reply count that starts with a 1 (=28%, not bad).
My favorite is the US debt clock. Notice something about the first numbers? Thought so.

So, what are you going to do after you gained this amazingly useful knowledge?

[Scintillating]

Purely mathematically speaking, it's much less than 30 percent. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 then 10,20,30, etc. then 100,200,300,400,500

the larger the order of magnitude, the less dense the distribution of numbers starting with one

[Scintillating]

It pretty much comes out to exactly 11.11 repeating percent

[SubparTony]

This is no knowledge or fact. This something really random for a random person. It's like random^2.

[Knuckstrike]

At 2/10/13 07:56 AM, Scintillating wrote: It pretty much comes out to exactly 11.11 repeating percent

Nope. You need to see it as if the numbers are on a logaritmic scale. 30,1% of the line is a number that starts with a 1.

[Knuckstrike]

At 2/10/13 07:53 AM, Provoke wrote: What's the use of it?

As a large majority of the people don't know about this law, you can use it to detect frauds. With money transferring if there's a group of people who transfer as much money sums that start with a 1 as with a 9 to looks unsuspicious, you know there's something wrong.

Double post please don't hate me mods.

[Chrausner]

At 2/10/13 07:49 AM, Knuckstrike wrote:

So, what are you going to do after you gained this amazingly useful knowledge?

Allow me to narrate what I did after I gained this amazingly useful knowledge:

---///---
After reading Knuckstrike's OP, Lt. Chrausner decided to take a teleporter to the Netherlands, straight into Knuckstrike's room. With surprise, Knuckstrike stood up and shook hands with him. Lt. Chrausner narrowed his eyes as he spoke his words slowly:

"You have some nice details there, but unfortunately the amount of fucks I give is estimated at 0.00. I'm sorry."
---///---

[Cyberdevil]

At 2/10/13 07:49 AM, Knuckstrike wrote: So, what are you going to do after you gained this amazingly useful knowledge?

Going to browse through a few pages and see if your statistics are correct.

[Scintillating]

Benford's law is interesting. I thought you were just making this up as a BBS joke

[Cyberdevil]

At 2/10/13 07:49 AM, Knuckstrike wrote: Go to any site. Go check your post count. Go check thet view count of your favorite thread. Almost one in every three numbers starts with a 1.

Your theory doesn't hold. At the time of writing this, 6/50 topics start with one, which is less than 1/9th (considering there are 9 possible starting numbers). It's not working!

[FattyWhale]

At 2/10/13 07:53 AM, Scintillating wrote: Purely mathematically speaking, it's much less than 30 percent. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 then 10,20,30, etc. then 100,200,300,400,500

the larger the order of magnitude, the less dense the distribution of numbers starting with one

Wouldn't it be almost the same?
0-9: 1 starting with 1, 9 that don't -> 1/10 start with 1.
0-99: 11 start with 1, 89 that don't -> 11/100 start with 1.
etc.

[LiquidFire]

At 2/10/13 07:49 AM, Knuckstrike wrote: So, what are you going to do after you gained this amazingly useful knowledge?

Go play some Team Fortress 2.

[TheMaster]

Thanks for this, I'd never heard of this one before. Always enjoy these counter-intuitive mathematical quirks. I look forward to a thread full of people refusing to believe it like what always occurs when someone on the internet brings up the Monty Hall problem.

[Knuckstrike]

At 2/10/13 09:39 AM, Cyberdevil wrote:

At 2/10/13 07:49 AM, Knuckstrike wrote: Go to any site. Go check your post count. Go check thet view count of your favorite thread. Almost one in every three numbers starts with a 1.

Your theory doesn't hold. At the time of writing this, 6/50 topics start with one, which is less than 1/9th (considering there are 9 possible starting numbers). It's not working!

First of all; it's not a theory: it's a law.
You went through 50 topics? Wow. Or did you just check the first 50 on the general forum right now?
It might not work because a lot of the topics only have like 20 replies. If you try the c&c forum then you'll probably have way more luck. Or you just happened to pick a lot of threads that don't follow this rule. Bad luck I guess.
By the way, of the last 40 threads there are now 13 threads with a reply count that starts with 1.

At 2/10/13 09:41 AM, FattyWhale wrote:

At 2/10/13 07:53 AM, Scintillating wrote: Purely mathematically speaking, it's much less than 30 percent. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 then 10,20,30, etc. then 100,200,300,400,500

the larger the order of magnitude, the less dense the distribution of numbers starting with one

Wouldn't it be almost the same?
0-9: 1 starting with 1, 9 that don't -> 1/10 start with 1.
0-99: 11 start with 1, 89 that don't -> 11/100 start with 1.
etc.

I think it would be easier to understand if I gave you this example:

Think of a whole, real number above 0. It doesn't matter how high it is. Got it?
For example, if you thought of 4,562,745,234, then around 20% of the numbers below it start with a 1.
If you thought of a number that starts with 99 or 98 then it's indeed around 1 in 9 numbers that start with a 1. But if you chose something that starts with 20 or 19 then almost half the numbers start with a 1. The average of all these numbers is 30,1%

[KnightOnTheSun]

At 2/10/13 07:49 AM, Knuckstrike wrote:

So, what are you going to do after you gained this amazingly useful knowledge?

I'm going to continue my day and give the knowledge no second thought.

[4urentertainment]

But..I thought, mathematically speaking, that all numbers contained 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfEiJJGv4CE

[Skaren]

Boy oh fucking gee I'm going to climb onto my roof and scream this helpful tidbit of incorrect knowledge.

[Cyberdevil]

At 2/10/13 10:08 AM, Knuckstrike wrote: Or did you just check the first 50 on the general forum right now?

That was it. Didn't take very long...

It might not work because a lot of the topics only have like 20 replies. If you try the c&c forum then you'll probably have way more luck.

So I'm back with some more extensive research results. :)

In the general forum: 35/300 of the latest topics start with 1, which is slightly more than the probability (1/9).

As for C6C: 44/300. It might seem like more than 1/9, but 22 of those were locked with a mod comment (statistical deviance), so not counting those it's less than the probability there as well.

I was going to check the wi/ht forum, but since most threads are quick Q/A threads, meaning the vast majority only get one reply anyway, the majority is unquestionably 1s. Since that's a rule the random factor doesn't work.

Anyway, even with the 16/50 threads you counted at the time of posting, it's not 30%. Even counting all the locked posts in C&C it's not 30%, and much less with them uncounted. It seems more unusual than normal that it be so. I'm curious if you have any examples to show? Really would be cool if this worked...

[Knuckstrike]

At 2/10/13 11:30 AM, Cyberdevil wrote:

At 2/10/13 10:08 AM, Knuckstrike wrote: Or did you just check the first 50 on the general forum right now?

That was it. Didn't take very long...

It might not work because a lot of the topics only have like 20 replies. If you try the c&c forum then you'll probably have way more luck.

So I'm back with some more extensive research results. :)

In the general forum: 35/300 of the latest topics start with 1, which is slightly more than the probability (1/9).

What are you looking at? If you're talking about replies, 46 our of the first four pages' topics are either in 10-19 or 100-200 replies: 46/160=29%. That's pretty close to 30,1. This is on the general forum.
If you're talking about views, I only checked the first page because I'm pretty lazy. Sorry. Of the first forty there are fourteen that start with 1, giving you 35%.

This law works better with large numbers though. Like viewcounts of the top 50 submissions on Newgrounds. Let's check:
18 out of the 50 top submissions have view counts that start with the number one. That's 36%.

Convinced?

[JBK]

What can we do about this?

[Knuckstrike]

At 2/10/13 11:52 AM, JBK wrote: What can we do about this?

Make a site with millions of numbers that start with 2 and give everyone two million dollars to make sure 2 is the most used starting number. Then build buildings of 2000m high that cost $2,000,000 and post a giant two on everyone's window.

[Cyberdevil]

At 2/10/13 11:49 AM, Knuckstrike wrote: What are you looking at? If you're talking about replies,

As far as I know, there's nothing other than replies you can view here at the NG BBS. If I'm not missing some hidden feature?

46 our of the first four pages' topics are either in 10-19 or 100-200 replies: 46/160=29%. That's pretty close to 30,1. This is on the general forum.

I'm assuming you mean 100-199? That is pretty close, but it's not over. It's strange though, that the C&C forums have a lower frequency even though the number of replies per thread are much higher over there...

18 out of the 50 top submissions have view counts that start with the number one. That's 36%.

Hmmm... 3 out of the top 10. 6 out of top 20. 11 out of top 30. 15 out of top 40. 18 out of.. yeah...

Convinced?

Getting there :)

[Knuckstrike]

At 2/10/13 12:42 PM, Cyberdevil wrote:

At 2/10/13 11:49 AM, Knuckstrike wrote: What are you looking at? If you're talking about replies,

As far as I know, there's nothing other than replies you can view here at the NG BBS. If I'm not missing some hidden feature?

If you hover above the thread title bar on the thread screen, you can view the views as well.

46 our of the first four pages' topics are either in 10-19 or 100-200 replies: 46/160=29%. That's pretty close to 30,1. This is on the general forum.

I'm assuming you mean 100-199? That is pretty close, but it's not over.

Yeah I meant -199. 30,1% is average, so there will be as much 29% as there will be 31%.

[Cyberdevil]

At 2/10/13 01:01 PM, Knuckstrike wrote: If you hover above the thread title bar on the thread screen, you can view the views as well.

So I have been missing out on a hidden feature! :O Thanks for the revelation.

Yeah I meant -199. 30,1% is average, so there will be as much 29% as there will be 31%.

Ok. I'll buy it.

[The-Great-One]

At 2/10/13 07:49 AM, Knuckstrike wrote: US debt clock. Notice something about the first numbers? Thought so.

HOW CAN WE AFFORD THIS?