"Cultivating Deliberation for Democracy"

One of the most imaginative thinkers of the modern age is Tim van Gelder.  He chronicles some of his recent work in 

Cultivating Deliberation for Democracy

(March 12, 2012)

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The dynamic evidence page

Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law.

See also this post and this post.

Challenge to Admissibility of Handwriting Evidence Rejected by D.C. Court of Appeals

In United States v. Pettus No. 08-CF-1361 (Feb. 9, 2012) the District of Columbia Court of Appeals rejected a challenge to the admissibility of handwriting evidence in a criminal trial for felony-murder, sexual assault, and other charges. The court stated:

The principal issue on appeal is whether the trial judge erroneously admitted the expert opinion of an FBI forensic document examiner that a piece of handwriting left on the body of the murder victim had been written by appellant.   Specifically, we must decide whether opinion evidence of this kind based on comparison of “known” and “questioned” handwritings, resulting in the opinion that the same individual wrote both documents, meets the test of “general acceptance of a particular scientific methodology,” Ibn–Tamas v. United States, 407 A.2d 626, 638 (D.C.1979);  see Frye v. United States, 54 App. D.C. 46, 47, 293 F. 1013, 1014 (1923), required by this jurisdiction for the admission of forensic science evidence.   Although appellant, joined by the Public Defender Service as amicus curiae, makes a spirited attack on the general acceptance of all such “pattern-matching” analysis in the light of a recent National Research Council Committee Report, we hold that forensic handwriting comparison and expert opinions based thereon satisfy the bedrock admissibility standard of Frye and Ibn–Tamas and may be put before a jury, where remaining issues of reliability may be argued, after cross-examination and any counter-expert testimony, as affecting the weight of the opinions.

Hat tip to Convicting the Innocent and IfrahLaw
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The dynamic evidence page
Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan
It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law.

See also this post and this post.

The Curious Properties of Hierarchical Inference

Finally!
An in-depth treatment of David A. Schum's most penetrating and extraordinarily subtle theory of the curious properties of hiearchical inference:

Juchli, Biedermann & Taroni

Graphical probabilistic analysis of the combination of items of evidence

11 Law, Probabilioty and Risk 51 (2012)
N.B. But I think the authors are wrong to assert (as they do) that the really important part of any model of inference is the computational part. (They characterize Schum diagrams as "mere representations.")
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The dynamic evidence page
Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan
It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law.


See also this post and this post.

BISC Online Panel on Uncertainty (BPU)

From: Lotfi A. Zadeh <zadeh@eecs.berkeley.edu>
Date: Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 8:53 PM
Subject: [bisc-group] BISC Online Panel on Uncertainty (BPU)

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Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC)
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Dear Panelists and Members of the BISC Group:

Round 1 of BPU has been completed, minus a summary by Gert de Cooman on imprecise probabilities which will be posted a little later. The summaries are attached. Following is a list of the panelists and titles of their summaries. 

G. Coletti "A general model to handle uncertainty, based on coherent conditional probabilities."
G. de Cooman "Imprecise probabilities"
D. Dubois and H. Prade "A unified view of uncertainty theories"
G. Klir "Generalized information theory: A summary"
S. Li "Some nonlinear mathematical methods for uncertainty"
B. Liu "Randomness, fuzziness and uncertainty"
S. Liu, J. Forrest and Y. Yingjie "A brief introduction to grey systems theory"
H. Nguyen "On modeling and analyzing uncertainty for decision-making"
A. Skowron "Rough sets"
L. Zadeh "Generalized theory of uncertainty (GTU)"

Round 2 of BPU begins today. The posted summaries are open for questions and comments by the panelists, members of the BISC Group and others who may be interested. Please take a look at the summaries and post your questions and/or comments to the BISC Group <bisc-group@lists.EECS.Berkeley.EDU>. Please note that if you are not a member of the BISC Group you will not receive the comments and questions which are posted. To receive them, you can either become a member of the BISC Group by sending mail to sympa@lists.EECS.Berkeley.EDU with the following command in the body of your email message: subscribe bisc-group or from another account, subscribe bisc-group your_email_address or send a request to Ixel Chavez. At this point, the deadline for receiving your comments and questions is approximately March 23, 2012. Please note that your message should not exceed 700 words, for non-panelists, and 1200 words, for panelists. Round 2 will be followed by Round 3. In Round 3, the panelists will respond to comments and questions. After Round 3 is completed, preparation will begin to publish the Proceedings of BPU as a special issue of a journal or as a book, depending on the length of the Proceedings. 

In putting together the summaries, no attempt was made to achieve uniformity. The summaries are unedited. Please [bear] in mind that so far as I know, there is no precedent for BPU. Presumably, quite a bit will be learned from how BPU works out. I hope that BPU will have Hans Kuijper's blessing. It was his campaign to organize a World Conference on Uncertainty that motivated BPU. My feeling is that an online panel a la BPU is far more effective and far more useful than traditional panels. An important feature of BPU is that it will lead to a permanent record that is likely to be used by a world-wide audience. You are most welcome to post your comments and questions. 

Regards to all.

Lotfi-- Lotfi A. Zadeh Professor in the Graduate School Director, Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC) Address: 729 Soda Hall #1776 Computer Science Division Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California Berkeley, CA 94720-1776 zadeh@eecs.berkeley.edu Tel.(office): (510) 642-4959 Fax (office): (510) 642-1712 Tel.(home): (510) 526-2569 Fax (home): (510) 526-2433 URL: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~zadeh/ BISC Homepage URLs URL: http://zadeh.cs.berkeley.edu/

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The dynamic evidence page

Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law.

See also this post and this post.