Editing Benford's law (section)

===Distributions known to disobey Benford's law===
The [[square root]]s and [[Multiplicative inverse|reciprocal]]s of successive natural numbers do not obey this law.<ref name=Raimi1976>{{cite journal |last=Raimi |first=Ralph A. |date=Aug–Sep 1976 |title=The first digit problem |journal=[[American Mathematical Monthly]] |volume=83 |issue=7 |pages=521–538 |doi=10.2307/2319349|jstor=2319349}}</ref> Prime numbers in a finite range follow a Generalized Benford’s law, that approaches uniformity as the size of the range approaches infinity.<ref>{{Cite web|last1=Zyga|first1=Lisa|last2=Phys.org|title=New Pattern Found in Prime Numbers|url=https://phys.org/news/2009-05-pattern-prime.html|access-date=2022-01-23|website=phys.org|language=en}}</ref> Lists of local telephone numbers violate Benford's law.<ref>{{Cite journal| issn = 0003-1305| volume = 61| issue = 3| pages = 218–223| last1 = Cho| first1 = Wendy K. Tam| last2 = Gaines| first2 = Brian J.| title = Breaking the (Benford) Law: Statistical Fraud Detection in Campaign Finance| journal = The American Statistician| accessdate = 2022-03-08| date = 2007| doi = 10.1198/000313007X223496| url = https://www.jstor.org/stable/27643897| jstor = 27643897| s2cid = 7938920}}</ref> Benford's law is violated by the populations of all places with a population of at least 2500 individuals from five US states according to the 1960 and 1970 censuses, where only 19 % began with digit 1 but 20 % began with digit 2, because truncation at 2500 introduces statistical bias.<ref name=Raimi1976/> The terminal digits in pathology reports violate Benford's law due to rounding.<ref name=Beer2009>{{cite journal |last1=Beer |first1=Trevor W. |s2cid=206987736 |year=2009 |title=Terminal digit preference: beware of Benford's law |journal=[[J. Clin. Pathol.]] |volume=62 |issue=2 |page=192 |doi=10.1136/jcp.2008.061721|pmid=19181640}}</ref>

Distributions that do not span several orders of magnitude will not follow Benford's law. Examples include height, weight, and IQ scores.<ref name=Formann2010/><ref>Singleton, Tommie W. (May 1, 2011). "[https://www.isaca.org/resources/isaca-journal/past-issues/2011/understanding-and-applying-benfords-law Understanding and Applying Benford’s Law]", ''ISACA Journal'', [[ISACA|Information Systems Audit and Control Association]]. Retrieved Nov. 9, 2020.</ref>