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

Sitsofe Tsagbey, Miguel de Carvalho () and Garritt L. Page

The American Statistician, 2017, vol. 71, issue 3, 231-235

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.

Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00031305.2017.1311282 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:amstat:v:71:y:2017:i:3:p:231-235

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/UTAS20

DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2017.1311282

Access Statistics for this article

The American Statistician is currently edited by Eric Sampson

More articles in The American Statistician from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().