Ergebnisse
der Wette aus Warren Weaver’s Buch:
What happens? Just as an illustration, on page 297 of
the 1962 World Almanac (which page I just turned to by chance) there is a list
of the populations of "Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas,"
starting with Abilene, Texas (120,377) and ending, on that page, with Lancaster,
Pa. (278,359). There are 92 entries in all, and of these just 20
begin with the digits 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9; whereas 72
begin with the digits 1, 2, 3, or 4. The bet
pays off $52 on this particular column!
It is really surprising, when you first meet
the fact, that the first digits of random numbers are not distributed equally.
It is even more remarkable that this fact was apparently discovered so recently.
("In his paper "On the Distribution of First Significant Digits" (Annals of Mathematical Statistics, Vol. 32, No. 4, December 1961), Roger S. Pinkham says that there have been only five papers published an this subject, the first in 1938. )