 |
Benford's
Law by Mark Nigrini is available from Amazon
and from Wiley. My
thanks go to Andrew Fitzgibbon in the U.K. for posting an excellent
review of Benford's Law on his website.
Welcome to the "Fans of Benford" club. Click
here for an outline
of my conference presentation Benford's Law: The Facts, the Fun, and the
Future. Click
here for my Facebook
page Benford's Law by Mark Nigrini. Data
sets and templates related to Benford's Law: |
Chapter 1 to 7: The census
data set that is used for several applications. In the book I
might use
all the records (19,509 records) or I might only use the numbers
that are 10 and higher (19,482 records). Updated data has recently
been released by the U.S. Census Bureau. The new
data should also conform nearly perfectly to Benford's Law. |
|
Chapters (all): The Nigrini Cycle template
(Excel 2007 and compatible with Excel 2010). The graphs and the
data profile will only be correct if the instructions for formula
updating in cell H2 are followed. |
|
Chapter 2 to 6: The corporate payments data
shows several anomalies and is used to demonstrate some of the Nigrini
cycle tests. |
|
Chapter 2: Lake data
and the Nigrini Cycle. |
| Chapter 3: First 500
Fibonacci numbers
used in Figures 3.1 and 3.2. |
| Chapter 5: The Minitab
file with simulated data
with the calculated differences used in Figure 5.11. |
| Chapter 5: Journal
entry data used for Figure
5.15 and Figure
5.16. The source data is in the Figure 5.16 file. |
| Chapter 7: The
synthetic Benford Set in Figure
7.8. |
| Chapter 8: Excel file
for Figure 8.17 and Figure 8.18. Data
file with 1978 taxable incomes. |
| Chapter 9: Excel file
for Figure 9.5 and Figure 9.6. |
| Chapter 10: Excel file
for Figure 10.1 and Figure 10.2. Excel file
with data for Figure 10.3 and 10.4. Census data
used for Figures 10.16 to 10.18. |
| Chapter 11: Figure
11.5 Excel graph with GM trade payables data.
Figure 11.6 Excel graph with GM payments data.
The Chrysler data for Figure 11.8 can be downloaded from the
trustee's website.
Click on "Old Carco LLC (f/k/a/ Chrysler LLC)-09-50002".
Figure 11.13 Excel file
with Madoff returns data. Figure 11.16 Excel file
with Apple returns data. |
| Chapter 12: Figure 12.1 Excel file with stream flow
data (34 MB). |
| Chapter 13: Figure
13.1 Excel file with payroll data.
Figure 13.2 Excel file with payroll data. Lehman charitable gifts: Trustee website
(click on the Public>Statements of Financial Affairs in the
Categories on the left and then select Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. as
the entity.
The gifts start on page 268 of 341). If you are having difficulty
finding their Statement of Financial Affairs please click here
for an extract from that document listing the gifts and charitable
contributions. |
| . |
| End of Benford's Law
data sets and files. Please send me an e-mail if there is any file
that you would like to see added to the collection. |
| . |
| My Benford's Law Facebook
page is up and running, and in need of some more "Likes." |
|
| Click here
for the excellent online Benford's Law bibliography, with about 800
books, articles, and journal papers. The website was created by
Drs. Arno Berger and Ted Hill, two outstanding scholars. and the authors
of "A Basic Theory of Benford's Law.
Click here
for a pdf file with an extensive Benford's Law bibliography prepared by
Dr. Werner Hürlimann in Switzerland.
|
|
| Photos: |
Frank Albert. Benford, Jr. 1912
|
Frank A. Benford, Jr.1883-1948
|
Lunch with Harry Benford
|
Son of Frank Benford, 12/1993
|
|
|
|
|
Home of Frank A. Benford
|
Rugby Road, Schenectady, NY
|
Photos taken April 22, 1994
|
A first digit 1
|
|
|
|
|
Pieter Allaart, Mark Nigrini, Ted
Hill, Vrije Universiteit, 1994
|
Prof. Ralph A. Raimi, joint seminar,
Niagara Falls, 11/1996
|
Prof. Ralph A. Raimi, joint seminar,
Niagara Falls, 11/1996
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dartmouth
College, December, 2000. Benford's Law presentation titled
"Benford's Law, Its a secret law of numbers."
RealVideo and slides. You need to click on my presentation
title to start the video. Title should be viewable when you go
to the page. |
|
 |
Notes on Frank Benford |
|
|
|
|
Please
do not copy these images to another website. It took some effort
on my part to find and collect these documents.
|
|
 |
Can
Benford's Law be used in Forensic Accounting? |
|
This was my first published Benford's Law
article. It was a two-page article published in The Balance
Sheet, the journal of the Investigative and Forensic Accounting Interest Group of the
Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. I made quite a bold
prediction about analysis of digital frequencies and the audit of
tabulated data. The article was published in June, 1993 and was
written in early 1993.
|
|
|
May,
2004.
Benfordslaw.com has finally come home! This name was registered by
a cybersquatter in 1999 very soon after my Benford's Law paper was
published in The Journal of Accountancy. For a year or two
Benfordslaw.com lived in New Jersey and it then moved to a company with
a registered office on Sahara Avenue in Las Vegas. I visited the
office in October, 2002 to ask about buying benfordslaw.com. To see the
old office in Las Vegas, click
here. |
|
CBS
detective drama Numbers (spelled Numb3rs).
The
episode on February 3, 2006 spoke about Benford's
Law. I was flying from Cleveland to Montreal when the show was
aired and as of now I have still not yet seen the episode. Comments sent
to me by e-mail are welcome.
|
| Nigrini
Benford's Law presentation on YouTube:
My Benford's Law presentation (in four parts) from April 1, 2008 can
be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9MZh0HIWEs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeZvIttzHa4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNyZ-mBCw9I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wALyDsf9dxI
|
|
|
|
Copyright ©
2002-2012 by Mark J.
Nigrini. All rights reserved.
Except as permitted under the United
States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this web page may be reproduced
or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or
retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Requests for such permissions should be addressed to Mark J.
Nigrini.
|
