1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384 …

If you liked math in middle school, odds are that maybe you memorized the powers of two. But did you ever think about the fact that so many of them start with the digit “1”? Is there a reason for it? How would you go about stating the problem in more formal mathematical terms?

Dmitry Kleinbock from the Brandeis Math department explains in this Numberphile video:

Be sure to watch the extra content (below) for a slightly more technical, but still completely approachable, additional explanation, where the problem reduces to the so-called equidistribution property of irrational rotations of the unit circle.

Are there other numbers more likely to start with the digit “1”?  It’s pretty easy to convince yourself that there are.