Journal of Accountancy, vol. 203, no. 6, pp. 50–54.
ISSN/ISBN: Not available at this time. DOI: Not available at this time.
Abstract: Benford’s law holds that the leftmost digit in many types of numerical data is a 1 nearly one-third of the time, with probability inversely proportional to the value of each increasing digit. This phenomenon can be harnessed to analyze data to detect values that deviate from normal distribution and thus could indicate fraud. An Excel template that applies z-score values to Benford’s analyses of subsets of data can assess the probability that any one employee, customer or vendor among many may have committed fraud. The template is flexible by allowing users to set a z-score threshold above which the Benford’s analysis flags suspect data.
Bibtex:
@article {,
AUTHOR = {Lehman, Mark and Watson, Marcia and Jones, Tim},
TITLE = {Flexing Your Financial Sleuth Power},
JOURNAL = {Journal of Accountancy},
YEAR = {2007},
VOLUME = {203},
NUMBER = {6},
PAGES = {50--54},
URL = {http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2007/Jun/FlexingYourSuperFinancialSleuthPower.htm?action=print},
}
Reference Type: Journal Article
Subject Area(s): Accounting, Statistics