I began thinking about how much time each of the segments in a 7-seg digital clock display spent being illuminated.
The image shows the distribution I calculated (with red more frequently ‘on’ than orange, and the central colon omitted).
Today’s invention is to make such clocks with more robust segments corresponding to the red patches etc, in order that product lifetime is maximised. This might apply more to the mechanical flipover devices that can be found in eg airports and train stations.
Extending this thinking to digital calculators, if financial data obey Benford’s law then maybe the longterm distribution of segment activity for a business’ calculator (clearly different from the clock example above) could be recorded in order to indicate, in an instant, whether eg a company’s financial transactions were fraudulent or not.
