h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What exactly do you mean by, "that for some reason the later pages in a book of logarithms were much more smudged." Its just that I'm editng your entry for approval and wouldn't want to introduce anything incorrect.

Well, a book of logarithms is ordered in order of the first digits.
So all the 1's are in what is equivalent to chapter 1, 2's in chapter 2 etc.
Now what happens is that as these books are used the pages get dirty..as with any frequently used book...and it was found that they were always dirtier the nearer the front you were.
Now since nobody actually reads these books, they just open them up on the page they want, it stands to reason that if the 1s are more smudged then the 1s are more often used.

(I'm sure I can explain this better - I'll try again tomorrow )

But there are 10 digits, and that means that the upper range would be all the nines(well, one nine actually.)

So there would be an equal chance.

Erm, no...there isn't an equal chance (as in the artcile) but you would _expect_ there to be one; hence the surprise when this was first observed.

...I'm going to search for more sources...back soon...

A more comprehensive (and better spelt ) version can be found at:
http://www.keysites.com/ns/19990710/thepowerof.html

HTH,
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OK, I get it. (-: