> Edwards-Stuart had essentially concluded that the fire had been started by a discarded cigarette, even though this seemed an unlikely event in itself, because the other two explanations were even more implausible.
Anyone who believes that there are only three possible causes of a fire (not just three likely causes, but three causes with nonzero probability) does not understand fires. Changing "zero" to "epsilon" is going to radically change the Bayesian estimator and vastly decrease the probability that it was a discarded cigarette. Since no one in the case seems to have defined "epsilon", I'd throw out a naive Bayesian analysis too.
The author should (and I assume does, after looking at his CV), understand these modeling issues, so... I'm disappointed. The statistical analysis seems as bad as the legal analysis.
> Edwards-Stuart had essentially concluded that the fire had been started by a discarded cigarette, even though this seemed an unlikely event in itself, because the other two explanations were even more implausible.
Anyone who believes that there are only three possible causes of a fire (not just three likely causes, but three causes with nonzero probability) does not understand fires. Changing "zero" to "epsilon" is going to radically change the Bayesian estimator and vastly decrease the probability that it was a discarded cigarette. Since no one in the case seems to have defined "epsilon", I'd throw out a naive Bayesian analysis too.
The author should (and I assume does, after looking at his CV), understand these modeling issues, so... I'm disappointed. The statistical analysis seems as bad as the legal analysis.