PHP Benfords Law

Some month ago, I came out with an article about Benfords Law. This article deals with the summation and product formula based implementation in C. The algorithm is indeed cool for small statistical games, but not nice to use, when you have a set of numbers.

So, I developed a small class, that serves this need. Furthermore, this class is able to calculate the geometrical, harmonical and quadratical averages.

After including (require, include) this class, you can create a new object with

$benford = new Benford(array(1341,82,141,215), 10);

The first parameter is the array with the values to calculate. The second parameter is the basis of the number system. This parameter is 10 by default. (10 means a normal number system from 0..9). You can add more values with:


or simply:


After that, you have two options:

You can perform a run through the given set of numbers and get back the values of the Benford calculation. The second option is to use an average function. When calling an average function, the run()-function will be also called internally.

Get back an array with the Benford calculation:

$benford = new Benford(array(232, 211, 410, 301, 508, 192));

$result = $benford->run();

This returns an array with all the Benford results from the given data. Below you can see the code to perform the average functions.


$result_harm = $benford->getHarmonicalAverage();

$result_geom = $benford->getGeometricalAverage();

$result_quad = $benford->getQuadrateAverage();

The script is very easy to use. Have fun with it!

Download the source file.

One thought on “PHP Benfords Law

  1. And the artificial flower colors sensations also vary depending within the ambient brightness.

    You understand the real difference in shooting close which has a normal (50-55mm) focal length lens
    setting and ultizing the macro or close-up image photography settings.
    Flower emoticon text As everybody else who makes this discovery,
    I took pictures of any bug and flower that I could.

    Impressive shows of your number of flower types is able to keep a client involved for days on end durations.
    Slowly, which of flowers begun to emerge establishing symbols to specific kinds of flowers.

Leave a Reply
