Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Statistics and Juries
In the video "How Statistics Fool Juries," Oxford mathematician Peter Donnelly attempts to demonstrate through a number of examples how statistics, when viewed in a common manner, can be misunderstood and how this can have legal repercussions. Through a number of thought experiments, Donnelly provides the audience with examples of how seemingly simple statistics can be misinterpreted and how many more variables must be taken into account when calculating chance. Primarily he exposes the audience to the concept of relative difference, or the difference in likelihood between two possibilities in the same scenario. He then goes on to explain that without an understanding of this concept, many juries misunderstand statistics used in trials and very often convict people based on this faulty understanding.
Donnelly begins his presentation with a thought experiment involving the tossing of a coin and predicts the possibility of a certain series of results. When predicting the possibility of heads, tails, heads (HTH) or heads, tails, tails (HTT), I, like most of the audience, believed that the chance of either possibility was equal. However, I did not take into account the possibility of overlap and how HTH was more like to be achieved in an overlap. I also did not catch that the HTH could appear in clumps because of the overlapping (the third "H" in HTH is also the first "H" in the next HTH). There was...
What was important about this aspect of the video was that there were a number of factors which needed to be included when calculating the uncertainty of flipping a coin, not just two simple possibilities.
Next Donnelly gives the example of a hypothetical HIV test that was 99% accurate. However, if one took the test and received a positive result, the chance that person actually had HIV was not 99% but much less. I was surprised that in order to calculate the chance that a positive result was accurate one needed to incorporate how rare the disease was in human populations. For example if the rarity of someone actually having HIV was one in 10,000, when giving the test to a million people there would be so many false positives as to statistically overwhelm the small number who actually have the disease. If a test results in a positive then in order to calculate the chance that the positive result is correct, one must take into account the different possibilities involved. This includes such things as the statistical chance for false positives in relation to the chance that the test is accurate. When one takes all the various factors into account, the chance that a positive HIV result in a test that is 99% accurate only gives a 10% chance that the person actually has HIV,…
References
Donnelly, Peter. (12 Jan. 2007). Peter Donnelly: How Stats Fool Juries. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLmzxmRcUTo
When viewed from that perspective, it becomes understandable that a jury could not eliminate the second story beyond a reasonable doubt, and, therefore, had to acquit Michael of the crime. Psychological treatment of suspect Given America's complex racial history, it is no surprise that race is oftentimes seen as a significant factor in rape. There is no doubt that black men have been unfairly targeted as rapists in America. This is
During the 1960's and 1970's, violent contact with the police, resulting in force occurred during anti-war, labor and civil rights demonstrations, during a politically tumultuous time. It is safe to conclude that excessive force was used during these clashes. Deaths and injuries were the results of political clashes at the Republican Convention in Chicago, during campus riots held at several universities, during political demonstrations held in public places and in
Based on the foregoing considerations, it is suggested that the DCMP restructure their existing training programs and administration so that a more unified and centralized plan is in place, as well as providing for better instructor qualifications, evaluation, learning retention and more efficient and effective use of resources which are by definition scarce. These broad general issues were refined for the purposes of this study into the research questions stated
Public Perceptions of Police Misconduct Police Misconduct Public Perceptions of Police Misconduct Divided Along Racial Lines Public Perceptions of Police Misconduct Divided Along Racial Lines For anyone paying attention to the news of late, the conduct of the police has been under increasing scrutiny. The news media and the internet world are currently following a number of major stories concerning alleged police misconduct. These stories are as diverse as the New York Police Department
Victims and Criminal Justice Victimization, Victims and Criminal Justice Based on your understanding of routine activity theory, discuss (1) why or why not this theory can be used to guide our research on the victim-offender overlap and (2) what theory (or theories), beyond the routine activity theory, will be useful for advancing our understanding of the victim-offender overlap based on your assessment of what we do not know about the victim-offender overlap. Routine
"17 Keeping all these facts and figures in mind, it would not be wrong to conclude that low wage is one of the more serious problems of the country and needs urgent remedy. The government needs to address the issue properly and effectively keeping in view the current demographic trends. References 1. Anthony Bimba, The Molly Maguires: The True Story of Labor's Martyred Pioneers in the Coalfields (1950; reprint, New York: International Publishers,