Handbook of Forensic Statistics

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.

Section 1: Perspectives on Forensic Statistics 1. The history of forensic inference and statistics: a thematic perspective. ~Colin Aitken and Franco Taroni Section 2: General Concepts and Methods 2. Frequentist methods for statistical inference. ~David H. Kaye 3. Bayesian methods and forensic inference. ~David Banks and Maria Tackett 4. Comparing philosophies of statistical inference. ~Hal S. Stern 5. Decision theory. ~Franco Taroni, Silvia Bozza, and Alex Biedermann 6. Association does not imply discrimination: Clarifying when matches are (and are not) meaningful. ~Maria Cuellar, Lucas Mentch, and Cliff Spiegelman 7. Validation of forensic automatic likelihood ratio methods. ~Daniel Ramos, Didier Meuwly, Rudolf Haraksim, and Charles E. H. Berger 8. Bayesian networks in forensic science. ~A. Philip Dawid and Julia Mortera Section 3: Legal and Psychological Dimensions 9. How well do lay people comprehend statistical statements from forensic scientists? ~Kristy A. Martire and Gary Edmond 10. Forensic statistics in the courtroom. ~David H. Kaye Section 4: Applications of Statistics to Particular Fields in Forensic Science 11. DNA frequencies and probabilities. ~Bruce Weir 12. Kinship. ~Bruce Weir 13. Statistical support for conclusions in fingerprint examinations. ~Cedric Neumann, Jessie Hendricks, and Madeline Ausdemore 14. Probabilistic considerations when interpreting data base search and selection effects. ~M. J. Sjerps 15. Comparing handwriting in questioned documents. ~Alan Julian Izenman 16. An introduction to firearms examination for researchers in statistics. ~Susan Vanderplas, Alicia Carriquiry, Heike Hofmann, James Hamby, and Xiao Hui Tai 17. Shoeprints: the path from practice to science. ~Sarena Wiesner, Naomi Kaplan-Damary, Benjamin Eltzner, and Stephan Huckemann 18. Forensic glass evidence. ~Karen Pan, Junqi Chen, and Karen Kafadar 19. Estimation of insect age for assessing minimum post-mortem interval in forensic entomology casework. ~Davide Pigoli, M. J. R. Hall, and John Aston 20. Statistical models in forensic voice comparison. ~Geoffrey Stewart Morrison, Ewald Enzinger, Daniel Ramos, Joaquín González-Rodríguez, and Alicia Lozano-Díez 21. Bringing new statistical approaches to eyewitness evidence. ~Alice J. Liu, Karen Kafadar, Brandon L. Garrett, Joanne Yaffe

David Banks is a professor in Department of Statistical Science at Duke University. He is a former coordinating editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, director of the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute, and a Fellow of the ASA and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Karen Kafadar is a Commonwealth Professor and the chair of the Department of Statistics at the University of Virginia. She is a former president of the ASA; a Fellow of the International Statistics Institute, the ASA and the AAAS; and a former member of the Forensic Science Standards Board (FSSB) of the Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science (OSAC). David Kaye is Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and Regents’ Professor of Law and Life Sciences Emeritus at Arizona State University. He is a former editor of Jurimetrics Journal; a member of the FSSB; and the 2020 recipient of the Association of American Law Schools’ Wigmore Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions to the understanding of the proof process and the rules of evidence. Maria Tackett is an assistant professor of the practice in Department of Statistical Science at Duke University.