Should we count on numbers in a Court of Law?
August 19, 2009
For more information, contact the ISU Department of Mathematics:
Wolfgang Kliemann, Chair
515-294-1752 kliemann@iastate.edu
Sue Ellen Tuttle, Communications Specialist
515-294-8680 tuttle@iastate.edu
Ames, Iowa - A one-day gathering of mathematical, statistical, philosophical and legal minds at Iowa State University will delve into whether we can—or should—count on numbers in a court of law.
Should we trust the numbers? A workshop on philosophy, mathematics and statistics in the Court of Law, will be held on Friday, Sept. 11, in the Campanile Room of the Memorial Union on the Iowa State campus in Ames.
The workshop will feature overview talks on issues of philosophy, mathematics and statistics: epistemology, causality, and theory of evidence presentation in Court, and offer opportunities to consider the usefulness of statistics and mathematics in various legal approaches. In particular, participants will compare the use of Bayesian inference and a more holistic approach. Bayesian minded attorneys and other legal players begin with the juror’s prior belief, obtain the likelihood of occurrence relating to evidence, and work the two into a new belief to obtain posterior belief. Those utilizing a more holistic approach present combined pieces of evidence that, while individually insufficient to establish cause may do so when considered jointly.
Regardless of the method used, according to Alicia Carriquiry, professor of statistics at Iowa State, most important is whether the method is properly engaged.
“Correctly interpreting the significance of evidence is vitally important for the fair administration of justice,” writes Carriquiry, who also serves as vice president of the American Statistical Association.
As an example, Carriquiry cites the case of UK lawyer Sally Clark, who was wrongly convicted of the murder of her two sons. Aside from her babies dying two years apart, there was no other evidence to suggest murder, yet statistical evidence presented that the chance of two children from an affluent family dying of SIDS was 1 in 73 million won a conviction. Concerned about flaws in the reasoning behind this number, the Royal Statistical Society later issued a statement arguing that there was no statistically accurate basis for that particular claim as presented. UK crime statistics later revealed the probability that two infants will be murdered in the same household to be about 1 in 2 billion. Had the Court compared the likelihood ratio between the two findings, it is highly likely Clark would not have been convicted in the first place.
Susan Haack, a noted expert on the philosophy of mathematics and the use of numbers; and Joseph B. Kadane, a foremost authority on legal statistics, will headline the ISU event. Haack, the Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences and a professor of philosophy and law at the University of Miami, will present Proving Causation: The Holism of Warrant and the Atomism of Daubert. Kadane, who is the Leonard J. Savage University Professor of Statistics, Emerituswith Carnegie Mellon University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, will talk about Statistics in the Law: A Practitioner’s Guide.
A dessert reception will precede the evening roundtable, Numbers in the Court of Law.
Sponsored by the ISU College of Liberal Arts & Sciences; the Departments of Philosophy, Statistics and Mathematics; and the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities (CEAH), the program is open to the public. There is no charge for the workshop, although registration is recommended. To register, email name and contact information to tuttle@iastate.edu. Please put “Numbers Workshop” in the subject line.
This event is part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences 50th anniversary celebration. Liberal Arts and Sciences was formed as the College of Sciences and Humanities in 1959 and changed to its present name in 1990. Iowa State, however, has been offering liberal arts, science and humanities courses since the institution opened in 1869.
More information about the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ 50th anniversary can be found at www.las.iastate.edu/50th. Program details for the workshop are available online at www.las.iastate.edu/50th/thenumbersworkshop.shtml .
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