Full Description
Handbook of Forensic Statistics is a collection of chapters by leading authorities in forensic statistics. Written for statisticians, scientists, and legal professionals having a broad range of statistical expertise, it summarizes and compares basic methods of statistical inference (frequentist, likelihoodist, and Bayesian) for trace and other evidence that links individuals to crimes, the modern history and key controversies in the field, and the psychological and legal aspects of such scientific evidence.
Specific topics include uncertainty in measurements and conclusions; statistically valid statements of weight of evidence or source conclusions; admissibility and presentation of statistical findings; and the state of the art of methods (including problems and pitfalls) for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data in such areas as forensic biology, chemistry, and pattern and impression evidence. The particular types of evidence that are discussed include DNA, latent fingerprints, firearms and toolmarks, glass, handwriting, shoeprints, and voice exemplars.
Contents
1. The history of forensic inference and statistics: a thematic perspective. 2. Frequentist methods for statistical inference. 3. Bayesian methods and forensic inference. 4. Comparing philosophies of statistical inference. 5. Decision theory. 6. Association does not imply discrimination: Clarifying when matches are (and are not) meaningful. 7. Validation of forensic automatic likelihood ratio methods. 8. Bayesian networks in forensic science. 9. How well do lay people comprehend statistical statements from forensic scientists? 10. Forensic statistics in the courtroom. 11. DNA frequencies and probabilities. 12. Kinship. 13. Statistical support for conclusions in fingerprint examinations. 14. Probabilistic considerations when interpreting data base search and selection effects. 15. Comparing handwriting in questioned documents. 16. An introduction to firearms examination for researchers in statistics. 17. Shoeprints: the path from practice to science. 18. Forensic glass evidence. 19. Estimation of insect age for assessing minimum post-mortem interval in forensic entomology casework. 20. Statistical models in forensic voice comparison. 21. Bringing new statistical approaches to eyewitness evidence.
