Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, California 94720 ; Department of Mathematical Sciences, Indiana University--Purdue University Indianapolis, 402 N. Blackford Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-3216
Abstract:
A real number is said to be -normal if every -long string of digits appears in the base- expansion of with limiting frequency . We prove that is -normal if and only if it possesses no base- ``hot spot'. In other words, is -normal if and only if there is no real number such that smaller and smaller neighborhoods of are visited by the successive shifts of the base- expansion of with larger and larger frequencies, relative to the lengths of these neighborhoods.