The Benford law behavior of the religious activity data

TL;DR

This study investigates whether the distribution of first digits in religious activity data from Jehovah's Witnesses follows Benford's law, revealing a strong conformity across various activity metrics.

Contribution

It is the first comprehensive analysis showing that religious activity data conform to Benford's law, highlighting underlying numerical patterns in religious organizational records.

Findings

Religious activity data follow Benford's law closely.

Conformity observed across multiple activity metrics.

Supports the use of Benford's law in analyzing religious data.

Abstract

An important aspect of religious association is that adherents, as part of their religious duty, carry out various activities. One religious group known for keeping the elaborate records of day-to-day activities of its members is the Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs)-a worldwide Christian religious group. We analyze the historical records of the country-wide data associated with twelve different religious activities of JWs to see if there are any patterns in the distribution of the first digits as predicted by Benford's law. This law states that the first digits of numbers in data sets are not uniformly distributed but often, not always, follow a logarithmic distribution such that the numbers beginning with smaller digits appear more frequently than those with larger ones. We find that the data on religious activities like peak publishers, pioneer publishers, baptizations, public meetings, congregations, bible studies, time spent in door-to-door contacts, attendances at the memorial services, total literature and individual magazines distributed, new subscriptions and back-calls received excellently conforms to Benford's law.