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Cho, WKT and Gaines, BJ (2007)

Breaking the (Benford) law: Statistical fraud detection in campaign finance

American Statistician 61(3), 218-223

ISSN / ISBN: 0003-1305

ABSTRACT: Benford’s law is seeing increasing use as a diagnostic tool for isolating pockets of large data sets having irregularities that deserve closer inspection. Popular and academic accounts of campaign finance are rife with tales of corruption, but the complete data set of transactions for federal campaigns is enormous. Performing a systematic sweep is extremely arduous; hence, these data are a good candidate for initial screening by comparison to Benford’s distributions



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Reference Type: Journal Article

Subject Area(s): Accounting, Statistics