Benford’s Law: Analysis of the trustworthiness of COVID-19 reporting in the context of different political regimes
2021 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
In order for governments and demographers to, among other things, design policies and pensionplans, as well as for insurance companies to offer policies that serve general public, having reliable mortality data plays a crucial role. The academic world works actively in developing tools (models and methods) that can, based on collected mortality data, forecast future death rates in the observed population. Obviously, to be able to rely on the predicated data one needs a reliable source of existing mortality data. In the light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, reliability of certain death-case reporting has been questioned. In this thesis, the Benford’s Law is used to evaluate how well countries with authoritarian regimes (Azerbaijan, Belarus),and with democratic regimes (Greece, Serbia, Sweden), report their COVID-19 cases to theworldwide public. Statistical tests such as the Chi-squared test, mean absolute deviation, and the distribution distance were used to obtain the results needed to form our conclusions. During our testing, we found that countries with democratic regimes do conform better to the Benford’s law than the authoritarian ones.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2021. , p. 43
Keywords [en]
Benford's law, Covid-19, Chi-square, MAD, distribution distance
National Category
Probability Theory and Statistics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-54560OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mdh-54560DiVA, id: diva2:1562147
Subject / course
Mathematics/Applied Mathematics
Presentation
2021-06-02, 11:02 (English)
Supervisors
Examiners
2021-06-112021-06-082021-06-11Bibliographically approved