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arXiv 2202.05237stat.ME
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本福特定律的严峻考验

Severe testing of Benford's law

Roy Cerqueti, Claudio Lupi

摘要:

本福德定律经常被用作与数据质量或数据操纵甚至欺诈相关的关键决策的支持。然而,许多作者认为,传统的统计测试将拒绝无效的数据“本福德性”,如果应用在这种应用程序中的典型大小的样本,即使在存在微小的和实际上不重要的偏离本福德定律。因此,他们建议使用缺乏坚实统计基础的替代标准。本文有助于辩论的“大$n$“(或“多余的权力”)问题的背景下,本福德的法律测试。这个问题进行了讨论,与适合测试的优度测试的严重性测试的概念,与本福德定律的一致性测试的具体重点。为了做到这一点,我们还推导出平均绝对偏差($MAD$)统计量的渐近分布以及渐近标准正态检验。最后,严重性测试原则适用于六个有争议的数据集,以评估其“本福德”。

英文摘要:

Benford's law is often used as a support to critical decisions related to data quality or the presence of data manipulations or even fraud. However, many authors argue that conventional statistical tests will reject the null of data "Benford-ness" if applied in samples of the typical size in this kind of applications, even in the presence of tiny and practically unimportant deviations from Benford's law. Therefore, they suggest using alternative criteria that, however, lack solid statistical foundations. This paper contributes to the debate on the "large $n$" (or "excess power") problem in the context of Benford's law testing. This issue is discussed in relation with the notion of severity testing for goodness of fit tests, with a specific focus on tests for conformity with Benford's law. To do so, we also derive the asymptotic distribution of the mean absolute deviation ($MAD$) statistic as well as an asymptotic standard normal test. Finally, the severity testing principle is applied to six controversial data sets to assess their "Benford-ness".

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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