I think (but I'm not sure) that Benford’s law holds for other bases, too. (Though, for binary, the spread/pattern of grouping of "ones" would be the key - e.g. 1 nibble-4 bits to the Hexit)
That finding by Plouffle et al is on my short list of most surprising mathematical findings that have occurred during my lifetime... the idea that you could find the Nth hex digit in the hexidecimal expansion of pi without first finding digits 1..(N-1) is amazing. In '94 I would have said such a crazy thing was impssible!
Our web/finanical security is shot even without that.
ReplyDeleteInteresting stuff!
May be they've been late reporting it? ;)
ReplyDeleteOoh, I'm just not a good enough mathematician to work out the significance of this in an unnatural base like decimal, as opposed to binary.
ReplyDeleteI think (but I'm not sure) that Benford’s law holds for other bases, too. (Though, for binary, the spread/pattern of grouping of "ones" would be the key - e.g. 1 nibble-4 bits to the Hexit)
ReplyDeleteThe Mathematician does not give a Tinker's Cuss
ReplyDeleteThe Banking world goes Ape!
Very interesting!
ReplyDeleteThat finding by Plouffle et al is on my short list of most surprising mathematical findings that have occurred during my lifetime... the idea that you could find the Nth hex digit in the hexidecimal expansion of pi without first finding digits 1..(N-1) is amazing. In '94 I would have said such a crazy thing was impssible!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.metafilter.com/102301/Prime-Numbers-For-Web-Designers
ReplyDelete