algo-risk-benford

Installation
SKILL.md

Benford's Law Analysis

Overview

Benford's Law predicts that in naturally occurring datasets, the leading digit d appears with probability P(d) = log₁₀(1 + 1/d). Digit 1 appears ~30.1% of the time, digit 9 only ~4.6%. Deviations from this distribution may indicate data fabrication or manipulation. Analysis runs in O(n).

When to Use

Trigger conditions:

  • Auditing financial data (expenses, invoices, tax returns) for manipulation
  • Screening large datasets for data integrity issues
  • Detecting fabricated or artificially rounded numbers

When NOT to use:

  • For assigned/sequential numbers (zip codes, phone numbers, IDs)
  • For datasets with constrained ranges (e.g., human ages, percentages)
  • For small datasets (< 500 records — insufficient statistical power)

Algorithm

Related skills

More from asgard-ai-platform/skills

Installs
19
GitHub Stars
190
First Seen
Apr 10, 2026