Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 34 2 f Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
The claim needs a complete number of logarithmic decades. For the normalized log-uniform distribution on the specified range, is uniform on . Digit corresponds to . If is a positive integer, the integral of a period-one indicator over is times its integral over one period. Thus Benford law from logarithmic uniformity givesThis proves the intended case of integers , and even permits noninteger when the span is an integer.
For arbitrary real , the exact formula instead isOnly finitely many terms are nonzero. For a counterexample take , : then , so the leading digit is always one. That is not Benford law. The unrestricted range in the PDF needs this qualification.