CSAFE Learning is pleased to announce it will host two live webinars in February and March. Also, several new on-demand resources have been added to the online learning platform to help forensic practitioners and legal professionals understand the use of statistics in forensic analysis.
The first webinar, “Inconclusive Decisions and Error Rates in Forensic Science,” will be presented by Henry Swofford, the lead scientist with the Forensic Science Research Program in the Special Programs Office at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The webinar will be held February 27 at 1 p.m. CST.
Swofford will discuss how the treatment of inconclusive decisions and the calculation of error rates have become controversial topics in forensic science. He will highlight prior viewpoints and suggestions that have been proposed to address the issues and recommend a path forward for the forensic science community.
CSAFE graduate student Yuhang (Tom) Lin will present “Algorithmic Assessment of Striation Similarity between Wire Cuts” on March 19 at 1 p.m. CDT. Lin will propose a new, reproducible, automatic algorithm to analyze the similarity between wires, showing how interpreting the results promises a consistent way of using wires as forensic evidence in the future.
Attendees will have the chance to interact with the presenters and ask questions during the live presentations. But for those unable to attend, recordings of the webinars will be available on CSAFE Learning for later viewing.
CSAFE Learning has also added five new Stats Starters that are available to watch immediately. Stats Starters are easily digestible overviews that allow learners to explore a single foundational statistics concept and its application to forensic evidence. The new Stats Starters are:
- What do we mean by ‘Statistics’? Stats Starter
Hal Stern, CSAFE co-director, leads this beginner-level Stats Starter to define the term “statistics” and how it is used. - Bayes’ Rule Stats Starter
Stern introduces Bayes’ Rule, or Bayes’ Theorem, and how it applies to forensic evidence. - Likelihood Ratio Stats Starter
Stern introduces learners to the likelihood ratio and its growing application to forensic evidence. - Classification Stats Starter
Danica Ommen, CSAFE researcher, discusses the concept of classifying objects based on shared qualities or characteristics and how that applies to forensic evidence. - Discrete vs. Continuous Probability Stats Starter
Andrew Lim, CSAFE graduate student researcher, discusses the similarities and differences between discrete and continuous probability.
All of these opportunities are free and open to the public. To enroll, visit https://learn.forensicstats.org.
CSAFE Learning courses are sponsored by NIST through cooperative agreement 70NANB20H019.
