Math on Trial

January 21, 2013
A mother-daughter team of mathematicians turn the potentially dry topic of statistics and probability theory into an entertaining tour of courtroom calculations gone wrong. Schneps and Colmez structure their investigation around high-profile trials in which a mathematical premise was misused, therefore resulting in a possible miscarriage of justice. The cases they describe are independently interesting, and the mathematical overlay makes them doubly so. Each of the 10 chapters begins with a description of the relevant misapplied mathematical premise, then dives into the details of the cases themselves. Defendants past and present people the pages, including Alfred Dreyfus, the scapegoat for an infamous late-19th-century French spy scandal; Hetty Green, “the witch of Wall Street;” Charles Ponzi, whose eponymous scheme was his and—nearly 90 years later—Bernie Madoff’s downfall; and Amanda Knox, the supposed culprit of an internationally notorious 2009 murder in Italy. The mathematics tackled are not trivial, but as the problems are unraveled and the correct analyses explained, readers will enjoy a satisfying sense of discovery. Schneps and Colmez write with lucidity and an infectious enthusiasm, making this an engaging and unique blend of true crime and mathematics. 32 b&w images.

January 15, 2013
Chronicles of miscarriages of justice due to the misuse of statistics, combined with blow-by-blow accounts of criminal trials. Schneps and Colmez are a mother-daughter pair sophisticated in the ways of probability. Schneps studied math at Harvard, and her daughter has a math First from Cambridge; both are members of an international team dedicated to improving the use of statistics in the courtroom. Many of their accounts will make readers weep with rage--e.g., a mother imprisoned for murder in the deaths of her two infant children, largely based on the false assumption that the deaths were independent events, so the likelihood that they happened by chance was vanishingly small; an interracial couple convicted of robbery based on multiplying a bunch of inaccurate probabilities of nonindependent descriptors (black man with beard: 1 out of 10; man with mustache: 1 out of 4, etc.) to conclude that only the defendants fit the bill. The testimony of "experts" in all these cases inevitably overwhelmed the jury and brought the guilty verdicts. Fortunately, the cases were overturned on appeal when true experts explained errors and/or presented new evidence. The authors move on to more subtle applications of probability theory and fill out the volume with wonderful accounts of frauds and forgeries involving the likes of Charles Ponzi, Hetty Green and Alfred Dreyfus. Interestingly, the authors cite Harvard's Laurence Tribe, whose decades-old essay decrying the use of math in the courtroom led to a decline. Now, because of DNA testing, probability has made a comeback. How it was applied--and eventually ignored--makes the authors' analysis of the recent Amanda Knox case particularly chilling. Required reading for aspiring lawyers, but also intrinsically fascinating in its depiction of the frailty of human judgments.

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.