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. 2023 Sep;68(5):1768-1779.
doi: 10.1111/1556-4029.15337. Epub 2023 Jul 14.

A statistical approach to aid examiners in the forensic analysis of handwriting

Amy M Crawford  1 , Danica M Ommen  2   3 , Alicia L Carriquiry  2   3
Affiliations

A statistical approach to aid examiners in the forensic analysis of handwriting

Amy M Crawford et al. J Forensic Sci. 2023 Sep.

Abstract

We develop a statistical approach to model handwriting that accommodates all styles of writing (cursive, print, connected print). The goal is to compute a posterior probability of writership of a questioned document given a closed set of candidate writers. Such probabilistic statements can support examiner conclusions and enable a quantitative forensic evaluation of handwritten documents. Writing is treated as a sequence of disjoint graphical structures, which are extracted using an automated and open-source process. The graphs are grouped based on the similarity of their shapes through a K-means clustering template. A person's writing pattern can be characterized by the rate at which graphs are emitted to each cluster. The cluster memberships serve as data for a Bayesian hierarchical model with a mixture component. The rate of mixing between two parameters in the hierarchy indicates writing style.

Keywords: Bayesian; closed set; handwriter; hierarchical model; probability; writing style.

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References

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