Statistical Thinking for Forensic Practitioners Short Course – Session 2

This event is scheduled to take place on June, 10, 2022. A registration form can be found below. 

Session 2 Description:

Session 2: Sampling, Statistics and the Status Quo is the second session in the three-session short course, Statistical Thinking for Forensic Practitioners. 

Statistical ideas such as sampling, point and interval estimation of population quantities, and hypothesis testing have direct application in forensic science. In this session, we start from fundamental ideas about variability (and its sources) in measurements used in forensic analysis, and discuss methods to ameliorate, quantify, model, and interpret variation and uncertainty in the evaluation of forensic evidence. In more detail, we will:

• Talk about variability and its sources, and introduce ideas such as reproducibility, repeatability, and accuracy.
• Briefly talk about populations and samples, and describe some sampling methods useful in forensic applications.
• Introduce the idea of estimation of population quantities such as means and proportions and of methods to report the uncertainty attached to those estimates.
• Describe how to carry out a test of hypothesis to compare two means and a test of equivalence to compare two means.
• Demonstrate how statistical concepts can be used in the study of current forensic science practice (e.g., design and analysis of black box studies)

Presenter:
Hal Stern
Co-Director of CSAFE
Provost, Executive Vice Chancellor, and Chancellor’s Professor – University of California, Irvine

About the Short Course:

Session 2 is the second session in the three-session short course, Statistical Thinking for Forensic Practitioners. Dr. Hal Stern introduces fundamental concepts from probability and statistics –– motivated by forensic issues –– followed by a detailed investigation of how they apply to assess forensic evidence’s probative value. This short course will be held online in three sessions. Each session builds upon the previous one(s) and recordings will be available in the event registrants are unable to attend one or more of the live sessions. Researchers, collaborators, and members of the broader forensics and statistics communities are encouraged to attend. Short course registrants who attend all sessions will receive a certificate of completion.

Registration: