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All Data are Wrong, but Some are Useful? Advocating the Need for Data Auditing

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  • Sitsofe Tsagbey
  • Miguel de Carvalho
  • Garritt L. Page

Abstract

In a recent article from the Annals of Applied Statistics, Cox discussed the main phases of applied statistical research ranging from clarifying study objectives to final data analysis and interpreting results. As an incidental remark to these main phases, we advocate that beyond cleaning and preprocessing the data, it is a good practice to audit the data to determine if they can be trusted at all. A case study based on Ghanaian Official Fishery Statistics is used to illustrate this need, with Benford's law being the tool used to carrying out the data audit. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Suggested Citation

  • Sitsofe Tsagbey & Miguel de Carvalho & Garritt L. Page, 2017. "All Data are Wrong, but Some are Useful? Advocating the Need for Data Auditing," The American Statistician, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 71(3), pages 231-235, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:amstat:v:71:y:2017:i:3:p:231-235
    DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2017.1311282
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    Cited by:

    1. Roy Cerqueti & Claudio Lupi, 2023. "Severe testing of Benford’s law," TEST: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 32(2), pages 677-694, June.
    2. Junho Lee & Miguel de Carvalho, 2019. "Technological improvements or climate change? Bayesian modeling of time-varying conformance to Benford’s Law," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(4), pages 1-11, April.
    3. Sylwestrzak Marek, 2023. "Applying Benford’s law to detect earnings management," Journal of Economics and Management, Sciendo, vol. 45(1), pages 216-236, January.

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