Benford's Law - Distributions Known Not To Obey Benford's Law

Distributions Known Not To Obey Benford's Law

Square roots and reciprocals do not obey this law. Other collections of numbers that do not obey this law include the 1974 Vancouver, Canada telephone book, where no number began with the digit 1, the populations of all places with population at least 2500 from five US states according to the 1960 and 1970 censuses, where only 19% began with digit 1 but 20% began with digit 2, and the terminal digits in pathology reports.

The lack of fit in these cases have known explanations: the assignment of telephone numbers in an arbitrary manner, truncation of population size at 2500 inhabitants and rounding of data.