-
- Associate Professor
- Charlene Kalle
- Leiden university
- Ergodic theory
What Hermann Weyl has to say about the Newcomb-Benford law
The Newcomb-Benford law, an observation first made in 1881, predicts that in large natural data sets lower leading digits occur more frequently than higher leading digits. It is used for example in fraud detection. In this talk we will see some of the mathematics behind why this law also holds for sequences such as the sequence of powers of 2 and the Fibonacci sequence. We will also describe why the distribution of the non-leading digits becomes more and more uniform.
About
Charlene Kalle is an associate professor at Leiden University whoseresearch is in ergodic theory, the area of mathematics concerned with the typical long term behaviour of dynamical systems. She has a special interest in intermittency in random dynamics, dynamics related to number expansions and the fractals that surface naturally in these contexts.
Charlene's Homepage