Kathleen Z. Rooney
Physical evidence is collected at the scene of a crime. It can be compared to known evidence or classified by type and assigned a probability using data. It can identify a victim or tie a suspect to the scene of the crime. This evidence may be blood, bones, fingerprints, or hair. From most of these pieces of evidence, there may be the potential to extract and test DNA. Once collected and analyzed, these pieces of evidence speak most loudly through statistical analysis. Tremendous stores of data exist to analyze evidence; databases of fingerprints, probability models based on sizes of specific bones, DNA databases. The purpose of this unit will be to inform the presentation of statistics to students by utilizing actual data sets related to the human body and judging ""evidence"" according to the probabilities predicted in these data sets.
Our culture is saturated with television, movies and books that make these forms of evidence anecdotally familiar to students; fingerprints, skeletal remains, blood typing, and DNA. As each segment is introduced, students should be polled and pre-–assessed about their knowledge in these areas. The lessons will build on that pre-–knowledge and clarify important misconceptions. We will do a preview of the specific technology, looking at the biology, particular cases involving that evidence and the data that is available to work with. We will follow this with a look at the statistical tools that are available to calculate or estimate probabilities. Lastly, we will perform an investigation on some collected or created evidence. I will present this paper in the same format, breaking the work into the areas that we will cover and presenting background, mathematics and lab.