Greetings,
well is there a way to scientifically assess the handwriting characteristics and compare it with a population, esp one using a marker, including differences.
But to use your examples, I would say yes that would be strong.
regarding the holistic approach, Alan Perlman, Univ of Chicago linguistics prof (and in the department of linguistics) states:
Forensic linguistics, correctly practiced, is part art and part science. As Rogey Shuy has pointed out, it is good linguistics practiced within a legal context. What I report to my clients is not literary or abstruse. It involves specific linguistic data and my impartial evaluation of them.
He takes exception to psychologizing "I'm a forensic linguist (PhD, University of Chicago). I do both copyright and authorship work, and I've had quite a few interesting cases. I'll probably be going to LA later this month to testify.
I agree that Don Foster is not the real thing. He draws all kinds of indirect literary parallels on the basis of puns, allusions, subconscious references, and other matters that real linguists do not deal with. He psychologizes about his subjects. "
taken from here
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000931.php
This particular video
http://investigation.discovery.com/videos/solved-forensic-linguistic.html
sounds like what you saw on courttv with McM am I right?
by variance i mean,
[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variance[/ame]
In probability theory and statistics, the variance of a random variable or distribution is the expected square deviation of that variable from its expected value or mean. For example, a perfect die, when thrown, has expected value 7/2, expected deviation 3/2 (the mean of the equally likely deviations 1/2, 3/2, 5/2), but expected square deviation or variance 35/12 ≈ 2.9 (the mean of the equally likely squared deviations 1/4, 9/4, and 25/4). As another example, the two roots of the quadratic ax2 + bx + c have mean the root of its derivative 2ax + b, namely x = −b/2a, and variance its discriminant b2 − 4ac divided by 4a2, this being the square deviation of each root from the mean.
We could flip Cina Wong's analys around and ask the other experts how many differences do they find between PR and RN, and ask what is the likelihood that so many differences would be present from a random handwritten sample, also written with a marker.
if the distribution is normal, then they can use z-scores or t-scores, to compute p-value,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student's_t-statistic
n statistics, a t-statistic is, broadly speaking, a statistic whose sampling distribution is a Student's t-distribution. These are a parametric statistic, most frequently used in statistical hypothesis testing in Student's t-tests, but can be defined and used independently of hypothesis testing.
Most frequently, t-statistics are used by in Student's t-tests, a form of statistical hypothesis testing.
The key property of the t-statistic is that it is a pivotal quantity – while defined in terms of the sample mean, its sampling distribution does not depend on the sample parameters, and thus it can be used regardless of what these may be.
One can also divide a residual by the sample standard deviation:
g(x,X) = \frac{x - \overline{X}}{s}
McM for example states that 3 variables are present in a corpus of 300+ Colorado writers at 14-15% but that 6 it falls down to less than 1%
for example, how many slashes do you see $ in the RN, and how many in PR's samples? is it pickup, pick-up, or pick up? counter measure, countermeasure, counter-measure? a.m p.m, am pm, a.m. p.m.? is it advise or advize?
Malcolm Coulthard himself is a distinguished forensic linguist and a linguist, and he and other linguists have read and even cited McM's book as is John Olsson (who wrote the book introduction to Forensic linguistics)
As a forensic linguist I find many (but not all) of the comments on this page quite fascinating. I suppose about as fascinating as a geneticist would find the comments of a group of forensic linguists who knew little or nothing about genetics. I'm particularly amused that people should think of Don Foster as a 'forensic linguist'. He certainly did some clever attribution stuff and has a 'theory' that we all use language uniquely, but he has published - to my knowledge - absolutely nothing on the subject. Unfortunately there are those in the FBI who think he's an expert. It's a joke. Some of your comments on this page were quite good. You correctly point out that a lot of this started with Jan Svartvik, and you correctly point out that people like Gerald McMenamin and Roger Shuy are very impressive in what they do, as is Kniffka. Do drop by my site at any time. I did a lot of work on the language surrounding Andrew Gilligan's claims about his 'source', also analyses of the 'anthrax' envelopes, the men accused of terrorism in Saudi Arabia, etc.
Posted by: John Olsson at November 18, 2003 11:14 AM
The video alludes to Roger Shuy
http://www.rogershuy.com/ae_forensic.html
Distinguished Research Professor of Linguistics, Emeritus
Georgetown University,
Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University, 1962, English and Linguistics
M.A., Kent State University, 1954, English
B.A., Wheaton College (Illinois), 1952, English
and he has cited McM's books in some of his books like
Roger W. Shuy
Fighting Over Words, 2007: Oxford University Press
Roger W. Shuy
Linguistics in the Courtroom: A Practical Guide, 2006: Oxford University Press
(amazon lets you find who has cited this book)
For me personally, the only IDI scenario that makes sense is the one that you sort of lampooned -- the psychic re-enanctment -- the intruder entered the R's residence while they were away, he explored their house and wrote the RN BEFORE they arrived. He evidently was thinking of killing JB in his mind. I do wonder if PR were truthful about not knowing about the pineapple and that JB wandered to the kitchen to eat pineapple on her own, waiting for a secret visit from Santa Claus. Obviously I regard DNA evidence as valid, and that I'm skeptical the R's would know how to tie the garrotte, so it's evidence of the killer's knowledge and psychology,
The part of entering the house first happened to Amy (though not the RN I admit)