September 2018
Intermediate to advanced
392 pages
10h 16m
English
Note
The prosecutor’s fallacy
Many people assume that the likelihood of the evidence given the hypothesis – P(E|H) – is the same as the probability of the hypothesis given the evidence – P(H|E). This is incorrect. Imagine, for example, a US court of law, where the forensic expert has demonstrated that there is a partial DNA match between the perpetrator and the defendant, and that only 1 in 100,000 persons have that same partial match. Based on this information the prosecutor wrongly concludes that the probability of the defendant being innocent given this evidence is 1 in 100,000, thus the probability of the defendant being guilty is 99,999 ...
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