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The misquantification of probative value
1College of Law, Center for the Study of Law, Science and Technology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA.
Law and Human Behavior
|January 17, 2004
Abstract:
D. Davis and W. C. Follette (2002) purport to show that when "the base rate" for a crime is low, the probative value of "characteristics known to be strongly associated with the crime ... will be virtually nil." Their analysis rests on the choice of an arbitrary and inopposite measure of the probative value of evidence. When a more suitable metric is used (e.g., a likelihood ratio), it becomes clear that evidence they would dismiss as devoid of probative value is relevant and diagnostic.