Skip to Main Content
Forensic Analytics, 2nd Edition
book

Forensic Analytics, 2nd Edition

by Mark J. Nigrini
May 2020
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
544 pages
18h 51m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Forensic Analytics, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 5Benford's Law: Completing the Cycle

THE HIGH-LEVEL TESTS SUCH as the data profile, the histogram, the periodic graph, the descriptive statistics, the first-two digits test, and the Benford-related conformity statistics give us valuable insights into the internal diagnostics of our data. These tests give us a deeper understanding of the entity and our data, and they can also point us to large-scale frauds, errors, and anomalies when these issues are significant enough to affect the results. The two tests described in this chapter are more focused than our suite of high-level tests. The number duplication test tells us which numbers occurred most frequently in our data. The last-two digits test analyzes the last-two digits of our data and is often effective at detecting invented numbers. The tests can both be run in Excel, Access, or IDEA. The use of R to run the number duplication test is also demonstrated.

THE NUMBER DUPLICATION TEST

The number duplication test is a test that tells us which specific amounts were causing the spikes on the first-two digits graph. Spikes on the first-two digits graph are usually linked with some specific amounts occurring abnormally often. For example, the first-two digits of the District of Columbia purchasing card data in Figure 4.6 had 12 visible spikes. Also, the three largest Z-statistics were for the first-two digits 50, 24, and 25 in that order. The results are presented again, this time in IDEA. The dialog box is activated by ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Forensic Analytics: Methods and Techniques for Forensic Accounting Investigations

Forensic Analytics: Methods and Techniques for Forensic Accounting Investigations

Mark J. Nigrini PH.D
Forensic Accounting For Dummies

Forensic Accounting For Dummies

Frimette Kass-Shraibman, Vijay S. Sampath
Forensic Accounting and Fraud Investigation for Non-Experts, 3rd Edition

Forensic Accounting and Fraud Investigation for Non-Experts, 3rd Edition

Stephen Pedneault, Frank Rudewicz, Howard Silverstone, Michael Sheetz

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781119585763Purchase book