Unconditional Justice

My Bayesian friends and colleagues are not going to be happy about a UK court ruling that Bayes' theorem cannot be used to analyze statistical evidence in trials.

I have five comments:

(1) Is one still allowed to use Newton's laws for evidence in a course case? You know, just in case gravity might be relevant. about a minute ago

(2) Maybe this is what EPSRC had in mind with respect to building UK capacity in statistics?

(3) Seriously, what the fuck?

(4) Facepalm!

(5) I guess UK justice is unconditional after all.

(Tip of the cap to Mariano Beguerisse Díaz.)

Update (10/03/11): Cosma Shalizi has posted some nuanced commentary on his blog (much more nuanced than my commentary, as I was quite obviously in full attack mode). As I stated in my response to his comment in this space (when my head was a bit cooler than when I wrote the original post), I do agree with his point in general, so we will see if reasonable uses of Bayes' theorem remain permissible in UK courts. I am most definitely cynical enough to doubt it, so I am still not happy about the situation, but we will see what happens in practice. Yesterday, I admittedly went into my usual Kill-Billish red-alarm mode when I saw the article in The Guardian. However, Cosma and I might have to have some words about confounding me with Brits. :) I am only Brit-employed, and you won't find me going out in the midday sun* anytime soon.

* Except for the last few days, in which we actually had midday sun.

Voted off!

I showed up to my second day of jury duty this morning and was voted off (well, "kicked off" is more technically correct) within 15 minutes of the court going on record. And, as predicted by my friend Danny when I first got my summons, I essentially got voted off for being myself.

There are various ways one can get kicked off --- in my case, it was a peremptory decision by the defense attorney. People can get kicked off in various ways but after a few really obvious people were dumped in those matters, the prosecuting and defense attorney get to alternate in kicking people off. It was the prosecutor's turn first today and then the defense attorney kicked me off during his first turn. When he had questioned me on Friday, my predilection for devotion to logic and stubbornness (the ambiguous location of the word "devotion" is intentional) came through like a beacon of light. He asked me how comfortable I felt about facts that "come out of left field" as opposed to ones that follow a train of logical progression, and I answered truthfully that I am less comfortable with those. I assume that's why he didn't want me there --- I imagine some of the stuff he brings into evidence will have that flavor. I also commented on the arbitrariness (and thus essential meaninglessness) of the phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt", which is in part what I think led to the defense attorney's line of questioning in the first place.

When I left, my going through the walk of shame very much reminded me of seeing people do that when they get voted off in "The Weakest Link", which is why I like the 'voted off' phrasing of this whole thing. When I left my seat in the jury box, I accidently tripped while walking down the stairs, which I suppose was a bit fitting for me.

On Friday, I accidently did two things that were "awesome". I was supposed to answer about whether I had previous jury experience and I indicated that I have "no experience", which led to a comment by the judge about Caltech people being generally inexperienced in life. This was completely accidental (albeit accurate). The truly "awesome" moment, however, occurred a couple of minutes later when the judge asked me what subjects I study. I answered "math and physics" and the judge said I didn't have to dumb it down that much and that I should be more specific. So, I decided that I was just going to give the short buzzword statements of what my fields are (the type I put on my CV) and I answered "nonlinear dynamics and complex adaptive systems". The entire room immediately burst out in laughter; this includes the defendant, who was using a Spanish translator. The judge didn't bother asking me what these things actually are, which would have taken a bit of time to explain (which is why I decided to be short and sweet).

Anyway, no more jury duty for me for a very long time because I'll be living in the UK by the time I'd be eligible again.

"Missed it by that much!"

I have to show up to the courthouse for jury duty tomorrow. I started having to check in for Monday 6/25 and I didn't have to show up the first four days. I almost got away with the whole thing.

Sigh... it's time to serve my country.

My famous jury duty story

It may not be "world famous" like KROQ, but I have a pretty damned cool story to tell about my one of my really slick ways of avoiding jury duty.

I have avoided jury duty on numerous occasions, using multiple methods. My luck had finally run out, as I was to actually show up for the first time tomorrow. However, I am getting at least a one-day reprieve, as my group doesn't have to show up to the courthouse tomorrow. I have my fingers crossed that this luck continues for the rest of the week.

My most recent avoidings of jury duty were a few years ago and went along the following lines: I received a summons for a California court while I was in grad school at Cornell, so I informed them that I live in New York. While in grad school, I also received a summons from a court in Ithaca, so I got out of that by informing them of my voting status in California.

My best story, however, culminated in the summer between my junior and senior years (summer 1996). I had been summoned to one court in Beverly Hills. I tried unsuccessfully to get out of it because of my student status, but I delayed it for the then-maximum 6 months at one time. (If I recall correctly, one was allowed two separate six-month delays at the time.) I was supposed to be taken out of the pool for new summons, but I nevertheless received a summons during this waiting period to appear in another of the Beverly Hills courts. I attempted to get out of this using the reason that I was already summoned elsewhere so that I wasn't supposed to be in the candidate pool, etc. They did not accept this reasoning, which wa clearly valid, and scheduled my appearance for jury duty in that other court.

This, of course, meant war. Yesterday, I read an essay by Harlan Ellison about revenge, and my actions in this particular case fit pretty well within Ellison's discussion. I delayed both of my court appearance dates, which I remind you were in two different courts, to the same day. You might remember that back in 1996, there was some delay as databases got updated, so the solution was simple: I called the first courthouse and informed them of the clerical error that had me showing up to both courts on the same day, which clearly I couldn't do. The guy I talked to checked their database and saw that it was true, so he removed my scheduled appearance at the first courthouse. Then, before the database could be updated, I immediately called the second courthouse and used the same procedure to remove my appearance there. Slam dunk! Of course, this wouldn't work nowadays because the database would have contained the updated information immediately, but the solution was the simple but elegant one for the technology of the day.

Take that, U.S. government bureaucracy!