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    • Fulltext

       

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      Permanent link:
      https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/joaa/038/01/0007

    • Keywords

       

      Benford’s distribution; exoplanets; significant digit law.

    • Abstract

       

      In many real life situations, it is observed that the first digits (i.e., 1,2,…,9) of a numerical data-set, which is expressed using decimal system, do not follow a uniform distribution. In fact, the probability of occurrence of these digits decreases in an almost exponential fashion starting from 30.1 % for 1 to 4.6 % for 9. Specifically, smaller numbers are favoured by nature in accordance with a logarithmic distribution law, which is referred to as Benford’s law. The existence and applicability of this empirical law have been extensively studied by physicists, accountants, computer scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, etc., and it has been observed that a large number of data-sets related to diverse problems follow this distribution. However, except two recent works related to astronomy, applicability of Benford’s law has not been tested for extrasolar objects. Motivated by this fact, this paper investigates the existence of Benford’s distribution in the extrasolar world using Kepler data for exoplanets. The quantitative investigations have revealed the presence of Benford’s distribution in various physical properties of these exoplanets. Further, some specific comments have been made on the possible generalizations of the obtained results, its potential applications in analysing the data-set of candidate exoplanets.

    • Author Affiliations

       

      Abhishek Shukla1 Ankit Kumar Pandey2 Anirban Pathak1

      1. Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, A-10, Sector 62, Noida, 201 307, India.
      2. Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali 140 306, India.

    • Dates

       
      Published
      15 March 2017
      Manuscript received
      9 August 2016
      Accepted
      11 November 2016

  • Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy | News

    • Continuous Article Publication

      Posted on January 27, 2016

      Since January 2016, the Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy has moved to Continuous Article Publishing (CAP) mode. This means that each accepted article is being published immediately online with DOI and article citation ID with starting page number 1. Articles are also visible in Web of Science immediately. All these have helped shorten the publication time and have improved the visibility of the articles.

    • Editorial Note on Continuous Article Publication

      Posted on July 25, 2019

      Click here for Editorial Note on CAP Mode

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