> 30% chance that the FIRST digit is a "1".


I remember that the first digit of numbers from accounting tend to be distributed something like


distr(i) = Log( (i+1)/i ) / Log(10)


which gives


1, 30.1%

2, 17.6%

3, 12.5%

4, 9.7%

5, 7.9%

6, 6.7%

7, 5.8%

8, 5.1%

9, 4.6%


I don't remember who figured that out.