Forensic Statistics.

Catalog description

Students address the application of statistical methods to forensic science problems and evidence interpretation. During this course, differences between the frequentist and Bayesian approaches are emphasized. The merits of each approach are explored for a variety of forensic problems, particularly the interpretation of forensic evidence in the courts. Students are exposed to examples pertaining to trace evidence, impression evidence, toxicology, controlled substances, and DNA evidence. Students learn how to construct simple Bayesian networks and utilize statistical software to compute results.