Benford's Law for Quality Assurance of Manner of Death Counts in Small and Large Databases

• Autores: Jeremy Daniels, Samantha-Jo Caetano, Dirk Huyer, Andrew Stephen, John Fernandes, Alice Lytwyn, Fred M Hoppe
• Localización: Journal of forensic sciences, ISSN-e 1556-4029, ISSN 0022-1198, Vol. 62, Nº. 5, 2017, págs. 1326-1331
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen

  • To assess if Benford’s law, a mathematical law used for quality assurance in accounting, can be applied as a quality assurance measure for the manner of death determination. We examined a regional forensic pathology service’s monthly manner of death counts (N = 2352) from 2011 to 2013, and provincial monthly and weekly death counts from 2009 to 2013 (N = 81,831). We tested whether each dataset’s leading digit followed Benford’s law via the chi-square test. For each database, we assessed whether number 1 was the most common leading digit. The manner of death counts first digit followed Benford’s law in all the three datasets. Two of the three datasets had 1 as the most frequent leading digit. The manner of death data in this study showed qualities consistent with Benford’s law. The law has potential as a quality assurance metric in the manner of death determination for both small and large databases.