Full course description
Forensic statistics is an continuing education
course designed for forensic practitioners.
We are preparing you for the Forensic Analyst Licensing exam.
You will have exposure to a broad range of forensic examples including those from GSR,
firearm/toolmarks, DNA, glass, bomb fragments, fingerprints etc. You are expected to work
hard to understand the context and lessons from all examples whether or not they come
from your specialty. In addition, I rephrase a quote from President J. F. Kennedy ‘Ask
not what Professor Spiegelman will do to teach you statistics, but rather how hard you
will work to learn statistics.’ I will my do my part to help you work to learn the material
for this course.
We will cover approximately the first 60% of the text, that is, chapters 1-11. We will cover
most of the methods and ideas in these sections of the text. We will also present material,
with emphasis, that is not in the text such as database search false match probabilities,
and equivalence tests.