This post does not deal with the programming aspect of our work, but interesting enough to pass along, I think:
Statistical methods are frequently used in a variety of court cases; this story concerns a case in which Bayes' theorem was ruled invalid. According to
the article in The Guardian (UK), the judge:
decided that Bayes' theorem shouldn't again be used unless the underlying statistics are "firm". The decision could affect drug traces and fibre-matching from clothes, as well as footwear evidence, although not DNA.
The article describes a murder case in which the theorem was used to compute the probability that a particular set of shoeprints were made by a particular individual.
Frequently (pun intended), our statistical thinking is focused on our day-to-day work chores; it's fascinating when statistical methodologies get widespread media coverage in the outside world.