Using Data Analysis to Detect Fraud - IIA Dallas Chapter

“There is a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has alwaysbeen a tendency to confuse logic with values, intelligence with insight.Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matchedby the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead.Facts are terrible things if left sprawling and unattended. They are too easilyregarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materialscrying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires a very unusualmind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. The computer canprovide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant number until judgment ispronounced.”Norman Cousins (1912–1990), U.S. editor,author. “Freedom as Teacher,” HumanOptions: An Autobiographical Notebook,Norton (1981).Using Data Analysis to Detect and Deter FraudPricewaterhouseCoopersMarch 2007Slide 3