Editing Benford's law (section)

===Criteria for distributions expected and not expected to obey Benford's law===
A number of criteria, applicable particularly to accounting data, have been suggested where Benford's law can be expected to apply.<ref name=Durtschi2004>{{cite journal | last1 = Durtschi | first1 = C | last2 = Hillison | first2 = W | last3 = Pacini | first3 = C | year = 2004 | title = The effective use of Benford's law to assist in detecting fraud in accounting data | journal = J Forensic Accounting | volume = 5 | pages = 17–34}}</ref>

;Distributions that can be expected to obey Benford's law
* When the mean is greater than the median and the skew is positive
* Numbers that result from mathematical combination of numbers: e.g. quantity × price
* Transaction level data: e.g. disbursements, sales

;Distributions that would not be expected to obey Benford's law
* Where numbers are assigned sequentially: e.g. check numbers, invoice numbers
* Where numbers are influenced by human thought: e.g. prices set by psychological thresholds ($9.99)
* Accounts with a large number of firm-specific numbers: e.g. accounts set up to record $100 refunds
* Accounts with a built-in minimum or maximum
* Distributions that do not span an order of magnitude of numbers.