How to Detect Fraud Using Benford's Law
Vložit
- čas přidán 5. 10. 2020
- Forensic Accountant Robert A. Bonavito discusses Benford’s Law which is a technique to detect fraud especially when analyzing tax returns, general ledgers and other items that contain a large amount of numerical data
Topic Overview:
✔️ What is Benford’s Law?
✔️ Expected Data When Applying Benford's Law
✔️ Example of Benford's Law by Analyzing COVID Data
Website Mentioned:
www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-...
👉 For more information contact me below or visit our website: www.rabcpafirm.com/contact/?u...
Robert A. Bonavito, CPA
1812 Front St.
Scotch Plains, NJ 07076
908-322-7719 - Auta a dopravní prostředky
Upvote if you are here because of the 2020 election “results”.
yes and was sad to find out this law doesn't work well for election fraud detecting. see description and thesis paper showing it didn't work in the past: czcams.com/video/vIsDjbhbADY/video.html&authuser=0
@@dylanmcgriff822 Think you may have the wrong link in your comment. The czcams.com/video/vIsDjbhbADY/video.html&authuser=0 link goes to a video just explaining the law and does not address how it applies to elections.
@@reasonforge9997 Yes, read his 2020 election update in his discriptions below. He references this paper: core.ac.uk/download/pdf/206427437.pdf
@@dylanmcgriff822 Update, found the paper link in video description and read it and left comment on that video. The paper was full of much rhetoric but when it finally got to a real argument it picked artificial district sizes in a simulation--which seems ridiculous if they were really interested in simulating real life. From their description of their simulation: " "Our
simulations, though, consist of two types. In the first type, we simulate an election by creating 1000
districts wherein each contains the same fixed number of eligible voters. Here we run several sequences
of elections where every district contains 1000 eligible voters, elections where every district contains
10,000 voters, and elections where every district contains 20,000 voters".
This helps prove voter fraud!
One Month Ago... Bruh, he drops the smoking gun a month before it happens. This man is a psychic!
CZcams changed the date
Yeah it’s not like Benford’s law existed before the election or was ever used
@@NotKewl According to people on Twitter, quite a few people, Benford's law before the election was a decent tool and it had its uses to detect fraud. After the election, it is just a pipe dream of the sore losers and not reliable.
Life comes at ya fast.
It was expected that the dems would cheat for a long time now
It was used to catch Bernie Madoff
A CPA: The hero we need
Have no fear, New Jersey Forensic Accountant is here!
Did a math degree but got bored of it, maybe this is the motivation needed to set out a path to forensic accounting!
@@Rabcpafirm this is what he going to use in court?
@@atlnlgga3844 probably not, but gives people the hint that something does not going well
@@Rabcpafirm
I’m taking Stat analysis next semester. Just got finished with Calc 3. (Mechanical Engineering Major)
I haven’t been this excited over a math class in a while.
I’m gonna be pluggin ALOT of data sets into this formula using excel once I learn more about it.
Robert my man, get ready for a Red wave of Subs. 🙏🏾
Unless he gets removed for being fake news
@@PRODAt3 ARCHIVE EVERYTHING!
some kind of miracle... i’m not going to go out and riot if we have to live under a Biden administration but man...his gun reform policies is OUTRAGEOUS. no online gun sales, ammo sales, or gun accessory sales: gun parts (springs, screws, pins, slings, mags, etc.)...a new age identity politics...scary stuff.
Why? Because a bunch of Republicans falsy think they can apply Benford's Law in a place where it SHOULD NOT under any circumstance be applied? Watch this video: czcams.com/video/etx0k1nLn78/video.html
@@TomGalonska OK... Looks like Trumps data is way outta wack...But Biden's is A-OK. Sounds good? So... Umm.... Why don't we look into that?
Do you see a lot of Republicans saying that if there was fraud on behalf of Trump we shouldn't look into that?
What I am seeing is almost universal, the Republicans want a second look at the numbers where as the Democrats, even when the numbers show that it is Trump doing the tampering, do not want to look at the numbers and are fine with the result.
Frankly, it doesn't matter what party you subscribe to, these anomalies should encourage you to look further into the counts no?
Not only that, but the districts that Quick Maths provided were of Chicago where is this Forensic Accountant did all of Georgia.
IT DOESN'T MATTER WHOSE SIDE YOU ARE A FANGIRL FOR! THE ANOMALIES ARE THERE ON BOTH SIDES NO? THEN LOOOOOOOOK INTO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Its not the Republicans that are having a tough time getting it this time around.
I don't think Biden/Harris and Dr Fauci knew about this law.
even if they did, they would need to inject a random number of votes into every state in order to hide from it.
@@doombybbr that's not practical when trying to add the minimum number of votes to win but enough to not trigger a recount in each state.
@@doombybbr thats actually a mistake. they would have to inject numbers that aren't random, they would need to inject numbers starting with 1s at greater rates than others.
@@mwatkins0590 Randomness can be skewed to favour certain patterns. There isn't just one "random" type.
But it barely matters as someone can do a base 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9 check and then you get caught intentionally avoiding benfords
If you actually care enough about this to watch a 2 minute intro, here you go: czcams.com/video/etx0k1nLn78/video.html
To those wondering, Benfords law importantly requires values from multiple orders of magnitude inorder to be accurate (eg. 10-1000). If it happens to be that the large majority >90% happen to be in the same order of magnitude you begin to see a normal distribution
You are exactly right. Also, there is no assessment of statistical error in this analysis. I am a scientist and professor. My laboratory routinely use statistics to draw conclusions about the results of experiments. The analysis in this video is completely misleading. I stumbled upon this video, and I am deeply disturbed by the implications and the vast majority of comments. Today I made a video explaining how to properly analyze the COVID-19 data using county data which is a much larger data set. czcams.com/video/Y3P8A1RR5BM/video.html
I am happy to apply similar proper analyses to other data sets if people would like to see that.
No, you can’t use Benford’s Law to tell whether this cdc data is manipulated. For one the dataset is much too small (only 56 data points), giving random events too much weight.
You can do the same analysis for the population count of the US states and will get a similar “fraudulent” looking histogram.
Who's here after the 2020 us election?? Haha
If you actually care enough about this to watch a 2 minute intro, here you go: czcams.com/video/etx0k1nLn78/video.html
Me
Everyone lol
@@thelastengineer2315 me 2....
That is EXACTLY why I'm here!
Do a video on the election using Benfords Law. Thank you.
yes and was sad to find out this law doesn't work well for election fraud detecting. see description and thesis paper showing it didn't work in the past: czcams.com/video/vIsDjbhbADY/video.html&authuser=0
@@dylanmcgriff822 paid shill
Dylan McGriff probably edited the wikipedia page to say that too, thats why he links to a random video about the law.
Check out his new video: czcams.com/video/DoF3WS42w3M/video.html
@@r-gart The guy made a vid on how Benfords law does not work for elections in 2011. He's not a paid shill. You;re just a moron
I bet you had no idea this video was going to blow up due to the elections.
From a Statistician:
The sample size you're using for this data analysis is way too small. I did this myself using the coronavirus cases for every county in the United States and found that the data follows Benford's Law almost perfectly. Another condition of Benford's Law that is being violated is that you have to have a data set that spans a large number of values. In this case, you have a very high preponderance of cases that fall in the Tens of Thousands and Hundreds of Thousands. I can link the data sheet if anyone is interested.
Honest question, If you have a randomly generated sample of numbers, would its conformity to benfords law depend on sample size? In other words does benfords law not hold for smaller sample sizes, even if the sample is truly randomised? Or would the conformity just not be as pronounced as a larger sample size?
hello, can i have a link?
awesome
@@gulzarkundan4470 it doesn't work for purely randomly generated numbers, that's why frauds don't follow it
Another way you know this video analysis isn't very good is that it can't figure out whether this phenomenon is called "Benford's Law" or "Benson's Law" - if you can't bother to get that right, why should anyone trust that your analysis is performed any more carefully?
I'm amazed that youtube would recommend this. The machine AI must not realize this goes against their narrative.
@Smarmy Fellow no, its not. the "maths" he's trying to use here is not apt at all for this situation. if you want, you should look up benfords law yourself and watch a vid from an actual mathematician so you understand
@@notme-ji5uo I agree to an extent, but that's not to suggest what he's explaining and uncovered isn't applicable in this case. He didn't say the reasons why the data could be misleading, only that something merits further investigation. I understand what you're saying though, due to other unforeseen circumstances (depending on the situation and circumstances) these anomalies would alter the results making the progressive curve less uniform. As he also said, this Benford's Law is a preliminary tool to look for anomalies, perhaps he should have then delved in deeper from that point on to see what else were the actual causes.
Branford’s law is known to not work well with data sets with 500 or fewer transactions.
Exactly, seeing people in here think 50 states is enough is asinine. You might be able to do this with county level data as it should provide enough data points, but even then it might not be applicable to epidemiology and it’s a weak test! It can’t prove fraud. It can only reject the assumption that there is no fraud.
Lotta armchair statisticians in the comments section
Also love that his graph says Bensons Law
@@OxfordLlama92 This is so weird, right? The guy spends the first 5 munutes explaining Benford's Law can be used on large dataset, and then he shows an example of a tiny dataset. Anyone who has done a semester of Statistics 101 should understand that's not how it works.
Thank you for this comment! The data set is too small. Although you can use statistics on small data sets, it has to be done properly with a proper assessment of statistical error, which surely was not done here. I am a scientist and professor. My laboratory routinely use statistics to draw conclusions about the results of experiments. I stumbled upon this video, and I am deeply disturbed by the implications and the vast majority of comments. Today I made a video explaining how to properly analyze the COVID-19 data using county data which is a much larger data set. czcams.com/video/Y3P8A1RR5BM/video.html
I am happy to apply similar proper analyses to other data sets if people would like to see that.
Wow I stumbled upon this. Great presentation by the way, I’m wondering, can you apply Benfords Law to the results Of the 2020 Presidential Election?
Yes, and how has this been applied to other elections in failed democratic elections?
Thanks Pb X, really glad you enjoyed the video. Yes, unfortunately, the 2020 election results will have similar issues when we apply Benford’s law.
Trump vote totals conform rather well to Benford's law, one of the first things you'd check in trying to determine whether there was fraud. Biden's fail miserably, and, what's more, the frequencies of leading digits for him are virtually symmetric about 5: exactly what you get if these were faked by those ignorant of Benford's law, and wanting to manufacture "average" looking numbers, those that begin with 4,5, or 6
@@d1agram4 I was sad to find out this law doesn't work well for election fraud detecting. see description and thesis paper showing it didn't work in the past: czcams.com/video/vIsDjbhbADY/video.html&authuser=0
@@dylanmcgriff822 shill
You should probably mention that Benford's law only applies to datasets that cross several orders of magnitude. A lot of people are being mislead by this with the election results. If, for example, all the values in the dataset are two digit numbers then Benford's law does NOT apply.
AND only if the dataset is big enough.
The CZcams algorithm is trying to tell us something but I wonder what it could be hmmm... 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
I've subscribed because I want to see a video of Benford's law applied to this election.
yes and was sad to find out this law doesn't work well for election fraud detecting. see description and thesis paper showing it didn't work in the past: czcams.com/video/vIsDjbhbADY/video.html&authuser=0
@@dylanmcgriff822 Don't be too sure. I don't have much of a head for Maths, although I did study the logarithmic way long, long ago ..LOL. But if I understood correctly, the boy says that the pattern is consistent and always works. Perhaps not in random situations like the front page of a newspaper, but if you listen to the full video, he explains why it DOES work for every fraud situation. I could be wrong in my understanding, because this bright young man did garble my brain with the complex mathematics, but I think Benford's Law will work if applied to this election situation, if only to see if fraud has actually occurred (I think it has!). In fact, I saw somewhere in this comment section, that this fellow has already been engaged by several parties concerning the US presidential election. Keeping fingers crossed that they will find what they need to find so that democracy will prevail!!
It has been applied, but the videos showing it are being censored by youtube...I WONDER WHY is the question every journalist on the planet earth should be asking right now!
pbs.twimg.com/media/EmLFD_7UYAAvvzJ?format=jpg B_den's vote results violate Benford's Law
@@sblbb929 Wow! Thanks for that. These graphs prove that Biden is the only one that violates Benford's Law. All the rest are more or less following the pattern. And that's just in Chicago. This proves that, YES, the Benford principle does indeed work even for elections. Thank you so much!
I’ll be taking this to court
To everyone asking for a thorough Benford’s Law analysis of the Chicago precinct election results, the mathematician Matt Parker did a thorough look on his CZcams channel Stand-up Maths.
The long and short of it is that Benford’s Law is not suitable for all data sets. Specifically, it’s a good indicator only for datasets that span multiple orders of magnitude. Consider a dataset that follows a normal (bell curve) distribution. If, for example, all of these data are one-digit numbers, then the Benford’s Law graph would be equivalent to a histogram of the data; it would look like a bell curve, which doesn’t match Benford’s Law. This doesn’t mean the data is fraudulent, it just means that it doesn’t cover a wide enough range for Benford’s Law to be applicable. A real-world example of this would be the distribution of adult heights in inches- all of the data will be two-digit numbers, so plotting all of the first digits is the same as just grouping all of the data into 10-inch bins. Legitimate data, doesn’t follow Benford’s Law.
The issue with the Chicago precincts is twofold: first, 98% of the precincts had vote totals between 100 and 1000 (average of 516, stdev of 173) and second, Biden was the favorite in the majority of the precincts. This means that the vast majority of Biden vote totals were three-digit numbers, while about 30% of Trump vote totals were three-digit numbers with 70% as two- or one-digit numbers. This means that, like in the example above, the Biden graph of the data is essentially a histogram with a bin size of 100, which we would reasonably expect to follow a normal distribution, which we see. Meanwhile the Trump data significantly covers three orders of magnitude, making it a suitable dataset for Benford’s Law.
Now that's some very good short example, quite helpful for getting a quick, basic grasp of how the law gets applied on practical level. You just earned another sub sir!
I did a presentation of Benford's Law in my fraud class in the Masters of Accounting Degree.
I would do an overlay of the presented number against the Benford's distribution.
can you tell me about fake data entry i mean how can we know the data is fake or authentic? for example if someone has 150 responses and duplicate the data and make some changes in it and make it 300 is there any way we can find out that the data of 150 responses is fake or not?
Mr. Bonavito, please do a video on this election in relations to Benford's Law.
yes and was sad to find out this law doesn't work well for election fraud detecting. see description and thesis paper showing it didn't work in the past: czcams.com/video/vIsDjbhbADY/video.html&authuser=0
@@dylanmcgriff822 American used it to detect fraud in the 2009 Iranian election
@@dylanmcgriff822 No, it actually works
As the only detraction is that certain areas tend a little bit towards certain leading digits, but not enough that a benfords law with a large data set would fail to follow the general trend. It is only a distinction that matters if you are looking at very minor deviations from benfords law, it doesn't apply to massive deviations.
You just get the curve being a little steeper or a little less steep, the general curve still exists.
Not to mention, every other location in this election follows the trend. And the only ones that don't just happen to be for biden in the massive swing states.
@@dylanmcgriff822 Benford law still applies. It's just not as steep. It's not supposed to have such massive deviations as Biden's does.
Accountants using math and never heared about statistical standard deviations. Whenever someone say "Its very complicated, it really means, he did not understand the thing"
Sir, I would like to thank you so very much for laying this out and doing so much good for our republic. God bless!
By misleading? Only 56 datapoints? He is a fraud.
that awkward moment when bidens election results break this law, and only in the swing states lol
Are you sure it's only in the swing states? Has anybody ever checked the election results in CA and NY against the Benford law?
@@mengyuanxian3279 Nah, they just watched one video one the results from the Detroit area and became instant experts. Next they'll prove the USPS is fraud because zip codes don't follow Benford's law.
@@SBBurzmali How's that CNN internship coming along ? I see your already falling in line ... you'll do just fine
@@chadbitcoin5085 lol, have you woven CNN into this conspiracy to steal the election or that just the go to attack these days?
@@SBBurzmali Even without benford's law theres been several witness accounts from postal workers and poll workers directly corelating to some of the fradulent/compromised votes we see
ive noticed that the number 6 is usually the number that is second highest on the chart when benfords laws doesn't work on the data. why is that?
or doesn't show true benfords law curve. sorry not sure if that make sense.
If the number 6 has the second-highest frequency, then it probably means that the data is not random or the sample size is not large enough. When our analysis comes up with the number 6 as the second-highest frequency, it’s usually telling us that the data is manipulated and probably fraudulent.
Thanks for the observation
Robert
@@Rabcpafirm awesome thanks for the reply
I was sad to find out the Benford's Law doesn't work well for election fraud detecting. see description and thesis paper showing it didn't work in the past: czcams.com/video/vIsDjbhbADY/video.html&authuser=0 core.ac.uk/download/pdf/206427437.pdf
I can't thank you enough for this video. It was so instructive and clarifying, and easy to understand, and it took just a few minutes. I'll share this video on every opportunity I get.
Again, thank you very much.
This is brilliant! Thanks for sharing Benford's Law. It can be applied so many places.
But keep in mind Benford's law only applies to big datasets (not 56 points LOL) and orders of magnitude.
Does the example with phone numbers in a phone book work? I thought they used specific numbers for specific things which would throw it off
Edit: also how many data points do you typically need before you see this technique as being significant? Obviously if you have millions of values it should be good, but is the example with 56 enough to make a judgement or would you typically need a lot more in a real world example?
I got banned from twitter for 12 hours for sharing a tweet about Benford's Law
Come to gab.
My man you are about to get a lot of views once people start hearing about Benford’s Law
Most interesting! I barely remembered any of this from college. Very good presentation too.
Apply this law to each county & state electoral return's and publish the results. It will be very interesting to see how each state is different
It's already been proven in Chicago.
Can you do a data sheet with the US election 2020? That would be interesting.
github.com/cjph8914/2020_benfords
@@jesswilson6012 thanks dude, interesting
In covid example there are only 50 data points, why would the law hold when only so few data points?
If you do a hypothesis test will that variance be significant given only 50 points?
What happens when you cheack Benfords law on the 2019 flew season database?
This is amazing!
A practical example of how to apply Benford's Law! Great job!
Unfortunately not - there are major flaws in this application (e.g. it is based on just 50 numbers whereas Benford's law would need much larger datasets across several orders of magnitude to have any chance of the dataset conforming to the pattern shown in Benford's law. Check this video out for a much more insightful analysis on Benford's law. czcams.com/video/etx0k1nLn78/video.html
Where in your Excel sheet did you use the "log" portion of the law ?
Very interesting!
Never heard of Benford's Law before.
Like uncle Joe said "follow the science."
Hi Robert, thanks for sharing this information.
Probably gonna sound like a broken record here in the comment section but I am too here due to the 2020 election.
Little did he know when he made this video, he would be hailed as a hero by Americans across the country.
If you want to see a more detailed explanation of Benford's law, this video is great czcams.com/video/etx0k1nLn78/video.html
A good video, but I gotta say that Covid data looked like it conformed pretty well with Benford's Law. There are only a few dozen data points, which is not many when you have nine slots to fill with data. Obviously, 1 is going to be the number that starts to take shape first as you add data and produce the Benford graph. 2 will be the second quickest slot to take it's proper shape. In this data, 1 occurs most frequently and 2 is already in the 2 spot. The rest of the graph deviates, but not wildly, and there are limited data points.
I think the Covid data follows the rule decently well.
running befords law on a data set of
Great easy to understand video. And no surprise that different states are reporting cases in different ways, not to mention the inaccuracy of the tests. One common mistake is to assume the underlying data for each data set member is incorrect when in fact, the results here only show the randomness or lack thereof for the data set as presented. This example illustrates that quite well.
I’m new to the concept of Benford’s law, but isn’t the chart at the end indicating that it actually falls pretty well in line with it? It deviates very slightly and matches up very well considering this is a pretty small sample size. The chart for physical constants deviates more than these numbers. I feel like saying these covid case numbers are indicative of fraud is quite misleading.
They are fraudulent. Everybody knows that.
@@melinawright5350 For argument's sake, lets say that it is fraudulent, this benford law chart does not indicate that. It doesn't deviate that much and it finds the trend very well considering how small the sample size is.
LOL We are all really here for the election "results"
Election results
What is the minimum data point to apply Benford's law. I'm an engineer and looking to apply this at work
I mean. Here we are a month later. This man gave us the clear guide we need.
Benford's law is not a law, likewise Moore's law and Murphy's law are laws neither.
They are all rules which strongly depend on the boundary conditions.
So this article is a big failure.
Regardless of political affiliation, the possibility of fraud in a free and fair society should disgust and concern *everyone*. Unless we want to become a third world nation, this must be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated. Thank you for such a fantastic explanation and analysis.
Good presentation. One last step to statistically decide if the number set conserves to Benford' s law is doing Chi Square test
The right man at the right place at the right time
It should be renamed to Biden's Law
Your dataset is very small.
The numbers in a phone book won't follow Benford's law. Also there are some assumptions that must be true in your data for Benford's law to be applicable.
Excellent presentation and choice of data!
Please save Trump!
Have no fear, New Jersey Forensic Accountant is here!
"Biden's Law"
Can you please show an example of a actual data set that has no fraud and the graph stating that?
Such a cool video with a practical application. Thanks for demonstrating this and even using the Covid data. Now I’ll try to mimic your results in excel. -N
At 2:50 Not sure it will work on the numbers of a phone book as they are not naturally occurring counts but may be artificially distributed.
I thought that too. Especially if it’s a local phone book, the numbers will have a higher likelihood of starting with a particular number due to area codes. Now if you took all the phone numbers in the US, that might be different. I wonder what he meant
The database you used for the example looks too small, 7 days' data seems to be small of sample size to be accurate. I heard it should be over something like 2000 to be more accurate, is that true?
this is some useful information. thank you sir !!
Im seeing a lot of criticism saying that Benfords law is not applicable to the election results. Its only applicable for accounting....
Mr. Bonavito, for data to look suspicious, what ratio between observed and expected should I use as threshold? For instance, if +/- 25% is the fraud threshold, and the "1"s are outside of +/- 25% of the expected 0.3 (higher than 0.0375 or lower than 0.0225), then I would view the data as suspicious.
You had a keen observation.
Mr Bonavito used "eyeball" analysis.
The histogram did not look Benford was his conclusion.
You want a more quantitative analysis.
There are many, many ways to measure Benford quantitatively. The most common is the Chi Square test.
You asked for a ratio that deviates from the expected value. You are on the right track because it is an excellent test but unfortunately there is no simple ratio. You would have to calculate the Z score for all 9 digits.
To be 95% confident that Mr.Bonavito's example DOES NOT follow Benford the Z score should be greater than 2.56(because 9 digits are being tested the Bonferoni adjustment comes in to play).
I calculated the Z score for 3 digits and not any was over 2.56.
An example to calculate the Z score for leading digit 1 is:
(.41-.30)/((.30x.70)/56)^.5= 1.8
.41 is the actual percentage
.30 is the expected percentage
.70 is 1 minus the expected percentage
56 is the sample size
^.5 is the square root
All 9 digits can be tested that way using each digits own specific actual and expected percentages.
This is such a small data set that you would expect some statistical variation. Digits 1 and 2 are the biggest but in a small set, the remaining digits are basically meaningless
This is a very fascinating subject
cool
We need to spread this as far as we can. I learned of Benford's Law from Louder with Crowder. Hopefully the President can learn of this fraud detection technique.
Dont worry, the guy who made this video actually commented a few days ago he was contacted to help with the investigations.
Thanks YT Recommendations!~
I swear I never typed ‘benfords law’ into my phone or computer just listened to podcasts talking about it and boom this is recommended, sure could just be viewed many times lately so CZcams recommends it okay. Still but weird. What’s even crazier is this was made before the 2020 election votes. Talk about good timing to make this CZcams video!
"The logorithms are way out of wack". Im getting that tattooed
Hilarious
I never thought I'd say accounting was fun, but anything forensic is interesting.
Very interesting! I'm not a numbers guy but I'll have to subscribe and try to absorb some of this.
Excellent explanation of this interesting statistical/mathematical law. Thank you. One question: I noted that the final chart was labeled "Benson's Law". Was that a typo? I looked up Benson's Law and could not find a reference to this phenomenon.
But keep in mind Benford's law only applies to big datasets (not 56 points LOL) and orders of magnitude.
Bensford's law only applies when there is a large range in the sizes of the data sets. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law It would have been nice if you had mentioned it. There may also be a misunderstanding of the definition of "law." A law is "a generally valid description, usually mathematical." In engineering, for example, Hooke's law is not valid for all materials over all stresses.
How does the size of the data set affect the fit of that logarithmic curve? Simple chance must be involved for small data sets. After all, a Data set of one value will have a 100% spike on one digit. Is there a rule for how many numbers a data set must have before you rely on this method?
very interesting! thank you
Would you consider doing a benford's law video for New York's COVID-19 data?
I really suck at math but Im curious if this law would work in a situation like this: If I want to inflate the number of covid deaths, but instead of creating fake numbers out of the blue, I report cases of influenza as covid, so I'm adding two natural occurrences that separated would fit the law right? Would this tempering with the data be caught by the analysis using the law?
If the data does not follow an exponential growth does the law still work?
WOW! I was wondering about this very question.
I’m not sure if I understand this properly but how can you use Benford’s law on a raw data and determine some sort of manipulation in numbers if the numbers are not supposed to go in sequence and don’t have causal or correlative relationship with eachother? (Maybe it’s just a stupid question because I don’t fully understand how it works on this particular example).
Great explanation and very helpful walking us through with a real life example.
Keep up the great work! Subscribed.
Except that the COVID example was not a valid one. Way too small sample size.
Interesting stuff thank you
The hero America needs, the hero America deserves.
Thanks very informative
Somebody please help me bc I really like learning this stuff.. what numbers start with 1 or 2 or whatever? I'm so confused what numbers we are talking about and this is my second video trying to see what's going on here.
So the premise of Benford's Law is that the frequency of the numbers 1-9 are not evenly distributed in large data sets? Is this due to rules of rounding?
Fascinating and informative. Great new tool to bang against an HOA if we can only get the financial data! Thx
It is a great tool, use it all the time in our forensic practice.
This video is BS. The dataset is way too small to claim anything.
@@AlcyonEldara what size data set is required to provide tangible results?
Can Benfords Law be used when one party voted by person and the other side was voted later by mail?
Is there any case where numbers were legitimate, or more accurately, fraud was not found where the histogram did not look like the model random distribution?
2020 election!! I subbed, hoping to see this channel talk about 2020.
Distribution is the key . Like chicago . The way the make up is heavy blue districs go all at once it will spike numbers am I right ?
Thank you kind sir
Good timing on this video.
Now as a hypothetical would some fraudster who knew of Benfords law be able to manipulate the data in such a way that it was still fraudulent but fell well within the law? Or is that sort of thing unmanageable like trying to keep track of a lie.