Most popular number

Out of the numbers 1–9, the most commonly occurring is the number 1. You might expect all numbers to occur with equal likelihood. But in fact studies of data in many forms, from train times, to accounting ledgers, to fundamental constants of nature, all show that the digit 1 crops up with probability 30% – and that higher numbers occur with steadily diminishing frequencies. Known as Benford’s Law, after its discoverer, physicist Frank Benford, this curious phenomenon is thought to arise because it’s not pure numbers that occur with equal likelihood, but rather their mathematical logarithms – giving additional weight to the lower numbers, the lowest of which is 1.