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15. This problem is based on a “Nifty Assignment” by Steve Wolfman (
http://nifty.
stanford.edu/2006/wolfman-pretid).
Consider lists of numbers from real-life data
sources; for example, a list containing the number of students enrolled in differ-
ent course sections, the number of comments posted for different Facebook status
updates, the number of topics in different library holdings, the number of votes per
precinct, etc. It might seem like the leading digit of each number in the list could
be 1-9 with an equally likely probability. However, Benford's Law states that the
leading digit is 1 about 30% of the time and drops with larger digits. The leading
digit is 9 only about 5% of the time.
Write a program that tests Benford's Law. Collect a list of at least 100 numbers
from some real-life data source and enter them into a text file. Your program
should loop through the list of numbers and count how many times 1 is the first
digit, 2 is the first digit, etc. For each digit, output the percentage it appears as
the first digit.
