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Conformance of Public Water Use Data to Benford's Law
Author(s) -
Sowby Robert B.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal ‐ american water works association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.466
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1551-8833
pISSN - 0003-150X
DOI - 10.1002/awwa.1161
Subject(s) - benford's law , statistical hypothesis testing , computer science , statistics , statistical power , quality (philosophy) , econometrics , law , data mining , mathematics , political science , philosophy , epistemology
Water use data are essential to managing public water systems, but because most of such data in the United States are self‐reported, it is difficult to assess their accuracy. Benford's law, which gives the expected frequency of leading digits in numerical data, could serve as one validation tool. This analysis tests whether Benford's law applies to observations of potable water use by US public water systems. Data at system, county, and state levels were examined using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test and visual inspection. Almost all were found to conform to Benford's law, although statistical power is generally low, and the tests may favor conclusions of conformance. This finding could serve as a quality check for historical water use data as well as projections. In one example application, two sets of data were compared, and the one known to be more accurate more closely matched Benford's law.