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

• Published in: The American statistician Vol. 71; no. 3; pp. 231 - 235
• Main Authors: Tsagbey, Sitsofe, de Carvalho, Miguel, Page, Garritt L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Alexandria Taylor & Francis 03-07-2017; American Statistical Association
• Subjects: Applied statistics; Benford's law; Data analysis; Data quality; Fisheries; Regression analysis; Significant digits; Statistical methods; STATISTICAL PRACTICE; Statistics
• ISSN: 0003-1305; 1537-2731
• DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2017.1311282

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.