Eli5: Why Benford’s law works ?

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Pretty much the title.
I understand this is a law but can there be a reason why this happens?
For background: for almost all real life data like population, GDP and other real word stats, probability of it having 1 is like almost 30% which keeps decreasing with 9 to be least probable.
But why this happens, is this just a fascinating pattern in randomness?

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7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I always thought of the hammer game where you try to ring the bell. Data is made from something happening so you start at one first then go through all the numbers before reaching one again when you start a new digit. So imagine the hammer game you hit it your more likely to start with a on than a nine because you have to go through one to get to nine and if you do get through nine you go right back to one again.

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