The Distribution of COVID-19 Cases in the Philippines and the Benford’s Law

Article Details

Aldwin T. Miranda, aldew2003@gmail.com, Southern Philippines Agri-Business and Marine and Aquatic School of Technology

Journal: Philippine e-Journal for Applied Research and Development
Volume 10 Issue 2020 (Published: 2020-09-22)

Abstract

As part of the Philippine government’s efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Health has regularly been reporting the number of positive cases, deaths, and recoveries from all over the country. However, there were doubts and allegations of concealment on the reported COVID-19 data. Hence, a test of fraud was conducted by examining the cumulative distribution of the country’s COVID-19 data if this conformed to the principle of Benford’s law. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (KS) was employed to analyse the difference between the distributions. The results show no significant difference between the COVID-19 data’s first digit distribution and the distribution set by the Benford’s law, thus suggesting no substantial evidence for data manipulation in the reported COVID-19 data of the Philippines.

Keywords: Fraud detection in COVID-19 data, Benford’s law applications

DOI: https://pejard2.slu.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2020.12.27.pdf
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