randomness in coin tosses and last digits of prime numbers

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A rather intriguing note that was arXived last week: it is essentially one page long and it compares the power law of the frequency range for the Bernoulli experiment with the power law of the frequency range for the distribution of the last digits of the first 10,000 prime numbers to conclude that the power is about the same. With a very long introduction about the nature of randomness that is unrelated with the experiment. And a call to a virtual coin toss website, instead of using R uniform generator… Actually the exact distribution is available, at least asymptotically, for the Bernoulli (coin tossing) case. Among other curiosities, a constant typo in the sign of the coefficient β for the power law. A limitation of the Bernoulli experiment to 10⁴ simulations, rather than the 10⁵ used for the prime numbers. And a conclusion that the distribution of the end digits is truly uniform which relates only to this single experiment!


Filed under: Books, Kids, R, Statistics, University life Tagged: Benford’s Law, coin tossing, prime numbers, randomness

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