Benford's Law and Fraud Detection. Facts and Legends

Diekmann, Andreas; Jann, Ben (6 February 2010). Benford's Law and Fraud Detection. Facts and Legends (ETH Zurich Sociology Working Papers 8). Zürich: ETH Zürich

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Is Benford's law a good instrument to detect fraud in reports of statistical and scientific data? For a valid test the probability of "false positives" and "false negatives" has to be low. However, it is very doubtful whether the Benford distribution is an appropriate tool to discriminate between manipulated and non-manipulated estimates. Further research should focus more on the validity of the test and test results should be interpreted more carefully.

Item Type:

Working Paper

Division/Institute:

03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Institute of Sociology

UniBE Contributor:

Jann, Ben

Subjects:

300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology

Series:

ETH Zurich Sociology Working Papers

Publisher:

ETH Zürich

Language:

English

Submitter:

Ben Jann

Date Deposited:

29 Jun 2016 09:04

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:47

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.69447

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/69447

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