Breaking Benford’s law: a statistical analysis of COVID-19 data using the Euclidean distance statistic
Breaking Benford’s law: a statistical analysis of COVID-19 data using the Euclidean distance statistic

Summary/Abstract: Using the Euclidean distance statistical test of Benford’s law, we analyse the COVID-19 weekly case counts by country. While 62% of the 100 countries and territories considered in the present study conforms to Benford’s law at a significant level of α = 0.05 and 17% at a significant level of 0.01 ≤ α < 0.05, the remaining 21% shows a deviation from it (p values smaller than 0.01). In particular, 5% of the countries ‘break’ Benford’s law with a p value smaller than 0.001.

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