In the 30th session of Chandoo.org podcast, let’s learn how to uncover fraud in data.
What is in this session?
In the wake of hedge fund scams, accounting frauds and globalization, We, analysts are constantly second guessing every source of data. So how do you answer a simple question like, “am I being lied to?” while looking at a set of numbers your supplier has sent you.
Here is an email Peter, one of our readers, sent me last week:
Dear Mr. Chandoo
Shown numbers are measurements from a certain industry process. They are sent to me from a subcontractor. I have to validate these numbers. But am I being lied to? Did they make up the values themselves?
Values can be between 1 and 6 per contract. They are not necessarily normal distributed because of different batches.
That got me thinking?
That is our topic for this podcast session.
In this podcast, you will learn
- Quick announcements about 50 ways & 200k BRM
- Introduction to fraud detection
- 5 techniques for detecting fraud
- Benford’s law
- Auto correlation
- Discontinuity at zero
- Analysis of distribution
- Learning systems & decision trees
- Implementing these techniques in Excel
- A word of caution
Listen to this session
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
Click here to download the MP3 file.
Links & Resources mentioned in this podcast
50 ways to analyze data course:
Fraud Analysis theory & examples
- Benford’s law
- Autocorrelation theory, example
- Discontinuity explained, usage in hedge fund scam data analysis
- Various Excel analysis models
Commonly occurring distributions
- Normal distribution
- Poisson distribution
- Exponential distribution
- Binomial distribution
Excel formulas & features to help you with fraud analysis
- SUMIFS / COUNTIFS formula
- FREQUENCY() function
- Data Analysis Toolpak (enable this free add-in from Developer > Add-ins)
- CORREL() function
Transcript of this session:
Download this podcast transcript [PDF]
How do you detect fraud?
I never had to detect fraud. So when Peter sent that email, I learned about it by researching. Based on the little I know about this field, my personal favorites are Benford’s law, distribution analysis, discontinuity at expected value.
What about you? Do you deal with data that has certain amount of fraud? How do you detect and analyze it? Please share your suggestions & tips in comments area.
Subscribe to our podcast and get latest episodes automatically
Use below link to add our podcast to iTunes. For other options (Android, Windows phone or RSS) click the link below. Thank you.
11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.