Forensic Analytics

The revised and updated Second Edition of Forensic Analytics offers an essential guide to detecting accounting fraud, biases, and errors in financial data. The author—a noted expert on the topic—explores the methods and techniques that investigators can use to identify anomalies in both corporate and public sector data. These anomalies include errors, biases, duplicates, number rounding, and omissions.

Forensic Analytics is written as a resource for professional accountants and auditors who typically lack a rigorous understanding of complex math and statistics. While the book is filled with fascinating vignettes and illustrations, it puts the focus on the quantitative and computing aspects of forensics. One lengthy chapter discusses how to detect financial statement misconduct through the use of various statistical approaches. The use of Benford’s Law, descriptive statistics, correlation, and timeseries analysis are also reviewed. The book’s data interrogation methods are based on common statistical techniques and the author’s own research in the field. The author shows how to use Access and Excel in a forensic framework to help connect the dots and to reveal any red flags.

This revised Second Edition contains updates to Access and Excel that help detect anomalies and potential fraud, a review of the use of R, a flexible and free program that can do almost anything when it comes to data analysis, and many fresh fraud cases that complement the techniques presented. In addition, Forensic Analytics includes a companion website designed to help practice the methods and to use the data sets used in the book as examples.

Forensic Analytics provides the information and examples needed to help you hone your skills to become a forensics-related analytics expert in your organization.