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| September 21st 2009 | Lecture/Reading |
| Time | 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm |
| Admissions / Ticket information | Open |
| Campus | AC |
| Location | Seeley G. Mudd Building, Rm. 206 |
| Speaker | George Cobb, Mount Holyoke College |
| Title | Mathematics Talk: "Drug Deals and Jury Wheels: Probability and Statistics Go to Court" |
| I have two goals for this talk. One is to tell the story of a probability problem that arose in a federal court hearing on a constitutional challenge by a dozen accused drug dealers-- a hearing for which I testified as a so-called “expert” for the prosecution. A second goal is to induce you to join me in thinking, along with Plato, Pascal and Polya, about the differences between mathematics and statistics. In this context, I’ll present two solutions to the probability problem. By that point in my talk, I hope that you will have anticipated the core of solution and that by thinking about the strategy you used, you’ll learn something useful about the way your mind works. | |
