National COVID numbers — Benford’s law looks for errors

Malcolm Sambridge and Andy Jackson (ETH) have compiled some new research on the use of Benford’s law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law) to analyse daily reports of Covid-19 infections and deaths per country. It transpires that for many countries, and also for the world as a whole, cumulative Covid-19 reports follow Benford’s law well up until the point where each country flattens the curve and the variation of first digits reduces. Some other countries have anomalies, not all of which we have been able to explain. 

An article on their findings, published as a Nature Correspondence, can be found HERE