The Bayesian Evidence Page

This page describes some of the research by Bernard Robertson and Tony Vignaux into the application of Bayesian probability to evidential questions in Court.

Interpreting Evidence

Interpreting Evidence: Evaluating Forensic Science in the Courtroom, published by John Wis iley and Sons, August 1995, 240+xxi pp. ISBN 0471960268. This aimed at lawyers and forensic scientists and introduces the Bayesian interpretation of evidence.

Some Publications

• Explaining Evidence Logically, New Law Journal, vol 148, no 6826, p.159-162, 1998 (with Bernard Robertson)
• Don't teach Statistics to Lawyers! Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Teaching of Statistics, Singapore (with Bernard Robertson) Vol 1, pp 541-547, 1998
• Bayes Theorem in the Court of Appeal The Criminal Lawyer, January, 1997, pp 4-5, (with B W N Robertson)
• DNA in the Court of Appeal The Criminal Lawyer, May 1997, pp 5-8 (with B W N Robertson)
• DNA on Appeal The New Zealand Law Journal, June 1997, pp 210-212 (with B W N Robertson)
• DNA on Appeal II The New Zealand Law Journal, July 1997, pp247-250 (with B W N Robertson)
• Forensic DNA Profiling, Rutgers Criminal Law Forum Review, vol 8, no 3, p445-459, 1997, (with G Chambers, and 3 others)
• Lessons from the New Evidence Scholarship, Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods, Santa Barbara, California, USA, 1993, Glenn R Heidbreder (ed), Kluwer, 1996, pp 391-399.(with B N W Robertson)
• Hypothesis Refinement, Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods, Cambridge, England, 1994 , John Skilling and Sibusiso Sibisi (eds), Kluwer, 1996, pp 183-188. (with B N W Robertson)
• DNA Profile Interpretations--A rejoinder to Price, New Zealand Law review 1995 Part IV, 460-464, (with B N W Robertson)
• DNA Evidence: Wrong Answers or Wrong Questions, Genetica (1995) 96 145-152 (with B N W Robertson)
• DNA Evidence: Wrong Answers or Wrong Questions, in B S Weir (ed) Human Indentification: the use of DNA markers, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1995 pp 145-152 (with B N W Robertson)
• Probability - The Logic of the Law (with Bernard Robertson) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies(1993) 13, 457 - 478.
  This explains the case for Bayesian Probability Theory as the correct method for reasoning about facts in legal cases and argues that objections in legal literature to probabilistic analysis are really objections only to frequentist interpretation of probability

Links to other pages

• Forensic science.
• The Forensic Science Society
• Banerian Forensic Web page.
• Victorian Institute of Forensic Pathology (Monash)

• The Evidence Site.
• Federal Judicial Center.
• International Commentary on Evidence.

• Bayes networks.
• Bayesian Network Interchange Format
• Microsoft Bayes network tool