
Howland Will Forgery Trial - Hooke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howland_will_forgery_trial
======
tomcatfish
While I appreciate that they attempted to use some kind of scientific
reckoning, using a weak science (handwriting analysis) and then adding
ridiculously high numbers to it (1/2.666E21) is a really bad way to decide on
this.

Link below [2] explains that the probability was NOT 1/2.666E21 that it was
not fake, because it is more likely than that that the science of handwriting
analysis is incorrect, or that the analysis was done incorrectly, or anything
similar (i.e. A one-in-a-trillion chance is more likely to be incorrect than
one-in-a-trillion).

Bonus round: They also commit the "Prosecutor's fallacy" [1], where they
explain how likely the evidence is given the hypothesis instead of explaining
how likely the hypothesis is given the evidence. Example: You are found in a
store and accused of robbing it. They ruled that you were accused of robbing
the store, and you being in the store fits this theory, when they should have
ruled on how likely you were to have robbed a store when they only knew you
were in it (not very likely, lots of people may have been in the store).

[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GrtbTAPfkJa4D6jjH/confidence...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GrtbTAPfkJa4D6jjH/confidence-
levels-inside-and-outside-an-argument)

~~~
knodi123
> using a weak science (handwriting analysis) and then adding ridiculously
> high numbers to it (1/2.666E21) is a really bad way to decide on this.

Ah, but ridiculously high numbers get such a nice emotional reaction from a
jury.

I once had a conversation with a guy who fiercely proclaimed that if you
shuffle a deck of cards, the resulting ordering is likely to be utterly unique
in the history of all shuffled decks ever, because there are <dramatic pause
/> 8E67 possibilities!1! Same as the number of atoms in our galazxy!

I went on to explain that while in theory this is true, in practice there are
a lot of caveats. Since brand new unopened deck of cards are usually all in
the same order, and since a perfect cut and a perfect riffle shuffle
(left/right/left/right/left etc) will always produce one of two orderings,
depending on whether you start with the left or right decks, etc etc, it
lowers the odds drastically. And it would be more proper to say that if you
sloppily shuffle a deck about 7 times, _then_ the original claim is probably
true.

But I lost the crowd. They had already had an emotional reaction to the
enormous number .

------
overlordalex
How is it possible that a wiki page about a trial neglects to mention the
outcome?

> The Circuit Court finally refused to admit the complainant's testimony, and
> dismissed the bill with costs. An appeal was taken, but withdrawn, on a
> settlement between the parties whereby the complainant received her
> expenses, costs, and counsel fees. The probate of the will of September I,
> 1863, therefore, remained undisturbed,

From
[https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?refere...](https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=4300&context=penn_law_review)

Which references as the original source:

> The American Law Review (vol. 4, pages 629-54)

~~~
saghm
Not sure if this was added before or after your comments, but at the time I'm
looking, the last scene sentence in the second to last paragraph of the intro
is "The case was ultimately decided against Robinson after the court ruled
that the clause invalidating future wills and Sylvia's signature to it were
forgeries"

~~~
overlordalex
Looking at the edit history it seems that someone came in and gave the article
a general cleaning.

I wonder if it's a viable strategy to post sub-par, but interesting pages to
HN in order to attract high-quality edits...

------
dstick
A one in 2,666,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance that 2 signatures would match...
Sounds about right for my own signatures ;-) When signing multiple documents I
get very different versions each time. As in.. some expert would probably
think they’d be fakes.

Are signatures still this valuable in court, in this day and age? Given that
they should be easy enough to properly forge, instead of straight out copy.

~~~
stormdennis
I used to get stressed at supermarket checkouts back when you had to sign your
name on the credit card slip. More than once I was asked to do it again and
then you felt all eyes on you and it was even harder.

------
jandrese
Signatures are bullshit. And the line:

> the probability that all 30 downstrokes should coincide in two genuine
> signatures was 1 2.666 × 10 21 {\displaystyle \textstyle {\frac
> {1}{2.666\times 10^{21}}}} \textstyle\frac{1}{2.666 \times 10^{21}}. That is
> one in 2,666,000,000,000,000,000,000, in the order of magnitude of
> sextillions.

is such outrageous bullshit that I'm saddened he wasn't immediately laughed
out of court.

~~~
PopePompus
Outrageous bullshit like this appears in modern court cases all the time
today. For example, it is common to cite astronomically small odds that a DNA
match is in error, completely ignoring the far higher odds that the sample was
accidentally contaminated, or the lab deliberately falsified the result to
satisfy prosecutors, etc. I'm not saying that DNA evidence is bullshit, only
that the only way to get something like a 10^-21 odds of error is to ignore
all the largest possible error sources.

------
stormdennis
So one way of determining if an instance of a signature is genuine is that it
should differ to a significant degree with all other known previous instances.
What a brilliant use of probability so long ago

------
plat12
Similar to will forgery, deed forgery is still a problem today. In fact, it is
a growing problem, as forgers have the information and access they need
through online land records. While online land records have greatly simplified
real estate closings, this is one downside. County recorders are unable to
stop these forged deeds, as they are legally required to record all deeds that
are appropriately formatted.

Many counties have deed recording alerts that alert property owners to
documents recorded against their name or property. However, many counties do
not offer this service, leaving property owners unaware of these forged or
fraudulent deeds, until they receive an eviction or foreclosure notice. As
such, we are offering a Title Watch service to inform you about potential
forged or fraudulent deeds recorded in your name or against your property.
Please visit us at [https://plathq.com](https://plathq.com)

~~~
mcherm
(1) Interesting connection to the original story. This is the sort of not-
exactly-an-ad-because-it-is-related mention that I find cool about Hacker
News.

(2) Let me see if I get this right: you offer a service that simply monitors
deeds and mortgages recorded against a specific plat and sends an alert to to
the subscriber if something is recorded (which is an extremely rare event).
And you charge $10/month/property for this service? What about the problem
makes it so expensive? Why aren't you likely to be disrupted by someone like
Zillow offering this $10/month service for FREE (and making money off the
address list they develop from it, plus advertising to all the homeowners)?

~~~
plat12
Glad you liked the “not-exactly-an-ad-because-it-is-related mention.” While
the probability of a forged deed is relatively low, the impact is not. In
addition to the risk of a thief just forging a deed to a property they have no
connection to, there is also the risk of intra-family deed/mortgage forgery.
This intra-family forgery is likely substantially underreported, and causes
the family to lose the property it has acquired through hard work because of
one bad apple.

In addition, people are (rightly) highly risk-averse about anything that
affects their family, their home, or the assets that they built over years and
decades. For example, real estate investors commonly put their property into
an LLC (which costs $800/year in CA) or buy liability insurance, even though
the probability of incurring a large liability is low.

With respect to costs, even though land records are public, machine-parseable
title/recorder data is expensive. Data from the tax assessor (even machine-
parseable) is relatively cheap, but is not as complete as recorder data. For
example, it does not have mortgages. We intend to achieve economies-of-scale
with respect to recorder data. At that point we intend to offer additional
value at the same price (for example, insurance) and add a free-but-sell-leads
service.

------
User23
The Peirce family are some of America’s most under appreciated mathematicians
and logicians.

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supernova87a
It must be supremely frustrating to a quantitative person when the statistics
meet reality: a jury that says, "well, there's still a possibility he didn't
do it, isn't there? You want to have us convict someone on math?"

~~~
wl
The standards in question are preponderance of the evidence (civil) and beyond
a reasonable doubt (criminal). The standard is never "any possible way" or "no
possible way."

So my response would be that at a certain point, a tiny possibility does not
amount to reasonable doubt.

~~~
supernova87a
Many people, especially when you have average people on a jury, are not very
good at drawing lines where the certain % or probability equals less than a
reasonable doubt.

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m463
When I read this quote, I think that either - we have lost a great deal of
literary education - or we have lost a lot of hogwash.

    
    
      "So vast improbability is practically an impossibility.
      Such evanescent shadows of probability cannot belong to
      actual life. They are unimaginably less than those least
      things which the law cares not for. ... The coincidence
      which has occurred here must have had its origin in an
      intention to produce it. It is utterly repugnant to sound
      reason to attribute this coincidence to any cause but
      design."

------
kazinator
> _The coincidence which has occurred here must have had its origin in an
> intention to produce it._

That is awesome!

------
mrpigeonpants
But did they find out if she was a witch?

