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An Ann-Based Auditor Decision Support System Using Benford's Law, Sukanto Bhattacharya, Dongming Xu, Kuldeep Kumar

Kuldeep Kumar

While there is a growing professional interest on the application of Benford's law and 'digit analysis' in financial fraud detection, there has been relatively little academic research to demonstrate its efficacy as a decision support tool in the context of an analytical review procedure pertaining to a financial audit. We conduct a numerical study using a genetically optimized artificial neural network. Building on an earlier work by others of a similar nature, we assess the benefits of Benford's law as a useful classifier in segregating naturally occurring (i.e. non-concocted) numbers from those that are made up. Alongside the frequency of …