Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

pt. I. General theory I : basis of Benford's law -- A quick introduction to Benford's law -- A short introduction to the mathematical theory of Benford's law -- Fourier analysis and Benford's law -- pt. II. General theory II : distributions and rates of convergence -- Benford's law geometry -- Explicit error bounds via total variation -- L�evy processes and Benford's law -- pt. III. Applications I : accounting and vote fraud -- Benford's law as a bridge between statistics and accounting -- Detecting fraud and errors using Benford's law -- Can vote counts' digits and Benford's law diagnose elections? -- Complementing Benford's law for small N : a local bootstrap -- pt. IV. Applications II : economics -- Measuring the quality of European statistics -- Benford's law and fraud in economic research -- Testing for strategic manipulation of economic and financial data -- pt. V. Applications III : sciences -- Psychology and Benford's law -- Managing risk in numbers games : Benford's law and the small-number phenomenon -- Benford's law in the natural sciences -- Generalizing Benford's law : a reexamination of falsified clinical data -- pt. VI. Applications IV : images -- Partial volume modeling of medical imaging systems using the Benford distribution -- Application of Benford's law to images -- pt. VII. Exercises -- Exercises.

"Benford's law states that the leading digits of many data sets are not uniformly distributed from one through nine, but rather exhibit a profound bias. This bias is evident in everything from electricity bills and street addresses to stock prices, population numbers, mortality rates, and the lengths of rivers. Here, Steven Miller brings together many of the world's leading experts on Benford's law to demonstrate the many useful techniques that arise from the law, show how truly multidisciplinary it is, and encourage collaboration. Beginning with the general theory, the contributors explain the prevalence of the bias, highlighting explanations for when systems should and should not follow Benford's law and how quickly such behavior sets in. They go on to discuss important applications in disciplines ranging from accounting and economics to psychology and the natural sciences. The contributors describe how Benford's law has been successfully used to expose fraud in elections, medical tests, tax filings, and financial reports. Additionally, numerous problems, background materials, and technical details are available online to help instructors create courses around the book."--Publisher's description

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