Interesting Links for 13-10-2011

[andrewducker]

• Hideously diverse Britain: Golliwogs are still legal. Does it matter? | UK news | The Guardian
  (tags:race uk law freespeech )
• Wall Street Journal circulation was faking its circulation figures to scam its advertisers
  (tags:media newspapers RupertMurdoch EpicFail fraud )
• Benford's Law and the Decreasing Reliability of Accounting Data for US Firms
  (tags:accounting fraud finance )
• How To Lead Clever People
  (tags:management business leadership creativity intelligence )
• How many slaves work for you? (I got 15)
  (tags:slaves slavery activism )
• The 50 best films of the '00s
  (tags:movies )
• The Freedoms Bill - better, but not good enough.
  (tags:freedom rights uk law politics )
• 50 Pictures Taken at Just the Right Time
  (tags:photos )
• A fantastic, very personal, piece on class, race, gender and the USA.
  (tags:class feminism classism race usa )

Comments

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

I can't get past the "next" button after entering my postcode on the slavery link.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Me neither!

[andrewducker]

Failing for me on that page too - I don't even get asked the question.

I'm at work though, I'll see what it's like when I get home.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Clearly they need to "encourage" their own slaves to do a better job...

-- Steve can't even get to enter a postal code, instead getting an error message that the site was only written for "normal" PCs and tablets as soon as he clicks on the "next" button.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

The slavery site is lovely, but to the point where it's excessive. The scroll on the info page where things pop in and out is somehow slower than normal pages and the sensation is rather unpleasant. I wonder why it's like that -- is that deliberate?

I have 25 slaves unfortunately. I hope it's because I skipped past all the food stuff and didn't pick individual things. Also, I gave my appetite as XL.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I want to find out what happened to the people in the picture with the hugh Great White Shark just in the background.

This is macabre, I know.

[andrewducker]

I would also like to know!

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I can't believe it ended well.

Great White Sharks scare me. Not because they present a constant danger* but because they are so very, very good at doing what they do. They are awesome.

*I believe more Australians are killed by falling coconuts than by sharks.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

"Nuts 2: The Revenge. Just when you thought it was safe to sit under the palm tree..."

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Nuts 3D: Nuts coming at you: in 3D.

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

Yikes, the slavery score for me comes out at 32. This is some way above the site average of 23. By far the most dominant factor is nappies for our 1-year-old, which is unfortunately somewhat plausible. All the other factors were either zero (sports, jewellery) or very comparable to each other (car, DVD player, food, etc), but nappies was way out ahead.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

The Benford's Law article was interesting. As it happens Benford's Law underpins some of the work we auditors do - mostly in procedures we carry out to detect fraud. However, as some of the comments suggest the author may be overlooking certain developments in financial reporting which may (and although I work in audit methodology, I'm no statistician) have caused some financial data series to become less Benfordian. I'm thinking in particular of the move from historic cost accounting (where assets are recorded at their original cost to the business less depreciation) to fair value accounting (where many assets are shown at the amount they could be exchanged between willing parties in an arm's length transaction).

My suspicion is that fair value assets would be somewhat less Benfordian than historical cost ones. Why? Because fair value allows for rather more management bias to enter the process. Now not all management bias is fraud and not all fraud is management bias. (This is one reason why auditing is so much fun...)

Of course, this means that Benford's Law becomes _more_ useful to auditors and forensic accountants.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't the audit process restrict the ability of management bias to shift the recognised value of assets from their real market (and therefore Benfordian compliant) values?

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Except that where the management bias affects a smaller number of high value items, for example the fair valuation of goodwill, an auditor trying to use Benford's Law will find it harder to detect an anomaly than would be the case with a larger number of low value items.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Yes, that makes sense.

And, from experience, things like valuation of goodwill are the murkier aspects of the balance sheet.