Data analyst says Turkey’s Coronavirus figures are inaccurate

Turkey’s daily figures for new Coronavirus cases have recently started to be published again, but one data scientist has suggested that they continue to be inaccurate.

Nick Brown looked at the figures released by the ministry of health, and found that the total figures for cases, deaths, tests and recovered patients rarely end in 0 (zero), which is statistically unlikely to happen randomly.

Brown also said that the figures themselves were inconsistent in their formatting

Just as an aside, there are inconsistencies in the formatting. The decimal separator for the % of patients with pneumonia varies between a comma & a period, suggesting that the data on the web page may come from a manually-maintained spreadsheet rather than a database report. /3 pic.twitter.com/IPf6mFYc5u

— Nick Brown (@sTeamTraen) November 26, 2020

He concluded that although it was uncertain what could have caused this anomaly in the figures,”it does seem somewhat unlikely that these numbers are entirely the product of natural processes. Perhaps some artefact of the data collection protocols is causing this.”

I have no idea what all of this means, but it does seem somewhat unlikely that these numbers are entirely the product of natural processes. Perhaps some artefact of the data collection protocols is causing this. /13

— Nick Brown (@sTeamTraen) November 26, 2020

Brown invoked the statistical principle of Benford’s law, which looks at the frequency distribution of digits in real life data sets, to show that it was unlikely that the Turkish Health Ministry’s figures were arrived at naturally. One respondent to the thread noted that “Bedford's Law roughly held in China, US, and Italy”, linking to an academic paper which analysed the figures from those countries.

Interesting!
Looks like Bedford's Law roughly held in China, US, and Italy;https://t.co/S0iiR6k1LP

— mac strelioff (@macstrelioff) November 26, 2020

On Friday Turkey posted its highest daily infection rate numbers, with almost 30,000 new cases. Doctors and other medical practitioners have been warning for months that the number of cases of Covid-19 in Turkey is far worse than reported.

Turkey confirms 29,845 new coronavirus infections, a record number for second consecutive day, taking tally to 481,198; death toll rises by 177 to 13,191 https://t.co/ip8YyMxyUz

— Factal News (@factal) November 27, 2020