A mathematical expression known as Benford's law provides an example of an unexpected relationship among randomly selected first significant digits (FSD). Newcomb (1881), and later Benford (1938), conjectured that FSDs would exhibit a weakly monotonic distribution and proposed a frequency...

When there is uncertainty concerning the appropriate statistical model and corresponding estimators and inference methods, we consider the use of the maximum empirical likelihood principle to define an estimator, beta overbar (alpha hat), that combines plausible estimation problems. This...