Data Conformance Testing by Digital Analysis – A Critical Review and an Approach to More Appropriate Testing

The use of Benford's digital law for data conformance testing has recently received growing interest, particularly in business auditing. A closer examination shows that the currently propagated approaches are questionable: i) The theoretical foundations consist in asymptotic laws and approximation theorems which give no constructive guidelines for industrial application. ii) The statistical methods used are not well-matched to the asymptotic and approximative character of Benford's law. Starting from a close analysis of these aspects, the paper suggests an approach to more appropriate statistical methodology for digital analysis.