A Complexity Based Model for Quantifying Forensic Evidential Probabilities

An operational complexity model (OCM) is proposed to enable the complexity of both the cognitive and the computational components of a process to be determined. From the complexity of formation of a set of traces via a specified route a measure of the probability of that route can be determined. By determining the complexities of alternative routes leading to the formation of the same set of traces, the odds ratio indicating the relative plausibility of the alternative routes can be found. An illustrative application to a BitTorrent piracy case is presented, and the results obtained suggest that the OCM is capable of providing a realistic estimate of the odds ratio for two competing hypotheses. It is also demonstrated that the OCM can be straightforwardly refined to encompass a variety of circumstances.

Provenance: The Bridge Between Experiments and Data

Current scientific applications are often structured as workflows and rely on workflow systems to compile abstract experiment designs into enactable workflows that utilise the best available resources. The automation of this step and of the workflow enactment, hides the details of how results have been produced. Knowing how compilation and enactment occurred allows results to be reconnected with the experiment design. We investigate how provenance helps scientists to connect their results with the actual execution that took place, their original experiment and its inputs and parameters.