Uncertainty affects nearly everything we do.
Virtually every decision we make involves
uncertainty of one kind or another. However,
uncertainty does not come naturally to people’s
minds.Wheneverwe can (and sometimeswhenwe
can’t),we substitute an imagined certainty thatwe
find more comfortable and easier to plan against.
Statistics offers tools to deal with uncertainty,
principally through probability. There are many
models and methods in a statistician’s toolkit.
Which to use when, and how to createmore when
necessary are the typical tasks facing users of
statistical methods. Every application of statistics
has to be sensitive to the institutional context in
which the problem arises. In the case of forensic
evidence, the institutional structure includes both
the organizations for which forensic scientists
work and the legal structures to which they
ultimately report.