BENFORD’S LAW In lists of numbers from many sources of data the leading digit 1 occurs much more often than the others (about 30% of the time). The law was discovered by Simon Newcomb, an American astronomer, in 1881. He noted that the first pages of books of logarithms were much more thumbed than others. Furthermore, the higher the digit, the less likely it is to occur. This applies to mathematical constants as much as utility bills, addresses, share prices, birth and death statistics, the height of mountains, etc.

MOORE’S LAW “The number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months.” An observation by Gordon Moore, a founder of Intel, regarding the pace of semiconductor technology development in 1961.

SAY’S LAW Aggregate supply creates its own aggregate demand. Attributed to Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832), a French economist. If output increases in a free-market economy, the sales would give the producers of the goods the same amount of income which would re-enter the economy and create demand for those goods. Keynes’s law, attributed to John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), a British economist, says that the opposite is true and that “demand creates its own supply” as businesses produce more to satisfy demand up to the limit of full employment.