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Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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platonov said:
Actually, if you go by London Johns's numbers on the 170 min limit and assume the meal began at 6.00 [as some here did- on the basis of 'conflicting' testimony] -- then there is a 99.9% probability she died 10 mins before she got home.

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So in other words a small adjustment to the calculations and he's got it, and 11:30 is completely out of the question. ;)
 
Kaosium said:
So in other words a small adjustment to the calculations and he's got it, and 11:30 is completely out of the question. ;)
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Shouldn't that be -
'Well, I don't know about that but it would certainly save a quarter.'
 
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Kaosium said:
I dunno about the 'considerable resources.' I've tried a number of times to find it on IMDB and it doesn't come up at all--at least not linked from Hayden's page.
Anyways, point being, just about everything under production from small independents is usually listed on IMDB, and I found it odd this wasn't. What is the official title anyway, does anyone know?
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IMBD info for 'Amanda Knox Story':
http://www.imdb.com/news/ni4431045/
 
TomM43 said:
Which set of rules do you want to use? The rule you assert, or the rule espoused by Kaosium just above by which, if applied to Mignini, means he is innocent until there is a final ruling from the court of cassation affirming the conviction?
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And you? Because you certainly used the one I cited when discussing AK/RS
 
odeed said:
Just did some calculations from the paper used by LondonJohn and Kevin_Lowe, I make P(X>150)=1-0.98790=0.0121 or 1.21% but according to her friends testimony they started eating around 6pm, so there should be at least 98.79% chance of her friends killing her.
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Let me get this reasoning straight:

It's impossible for Meredith have been killed by her friends. It's also impossible for her to have been killed at 23:30. It's highly unlikely but possible1 that Meredith died at 21:10. So your conclusion is that she died at 23:30? :)

In any case this is our old friend the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy back in action. You can't just calculate the odds of something having happened as seen from the perspective of before it happened, and infer from it the odds of that event being real as opposed to faked or erroneous.

For example, I just pulled two cards off the top of the deck of cards next to my computer. They were the Jack of Spades and the Three of Hearts in that order. WTF?!! I hear you cry! The odds of those two cards being on top are only one in 2652! Clearly those odds are so long that it's far more likely that forces unknown to science stacked the deck.

Your incredulity will no doubt mount when I tell you that the next card was the Ten of Spades. It's just getting silly now - the odds of this happening by chance are one in 132600. When I claim that the next card was the Five of Diamonds, well, it's pretty clear I must be lying or divine intervention must be at work. The odds of this extraordinary run of cards are now one in six and a half million.

I'm sure you see the point now. You are misusing statistics by applying incorrectly to get to a predetermined conclusion.

The fact is, the only reason we are talking about Meredith's stomach contents at all is because they were unusual, were unlikely and are enormously important to discerning the truth of this case. If Meredith's t(lag) had been more normal we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.

1If you arbitrarily ignore all other relevant information other than the stomach contents, which would in and of itself be a stupid misuse of statistics.
 
Machiavelli said:
The very end! Please. You should document what you read. I translated the Massei report, and never found the "very end" specification.
Neither I found Lalli calling this possibility "idiotic".

False. You can't prove the premise, and you can't prove the logical link to conclusion.

No? And why not? Because of Naruto episode 101?

The lag phase is a phase in the subject of stomach emptying, being a step in the process.
The problem here is that you are convinced that the lag phase is the only relevant datum. Your convincement is the problem, because it is unproven. And the concept of lag phase is a second problem, because its variability is too big.
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Since you cannot cite any scientific papers to back these claims up, and we have repeatedly cited scientific papers showing these claims to be completely false, you cannot expect anyone to take you seriously.

She had alcohol from a recent assumption, this is more than obvious, not from the previous day.
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This is incorrect. Her blood alcohol levels were compatible with either possibility and her stomach alcohol levels were unknown due to fermentation.

The facts I am talking about are simply...
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Nonsense snipped: You make these claims but you cannot back them up and you are flatly contradicted by the scientific literature. What you are saying is factually false. Stop repeating it.

But above all, what doesn't exist in this case is the logical meaning that you think you can attribute to time of death, and while in reality you don't need any 5-hours lag time to convict Amanda and Raffaele, in fact you only believe in the powers of Naruto.
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You seem to be in denial about the likely evidentiary value of the error log files, which seem highly likely to confirm Raffaele and Amanda's mutual alibi well beyond reasonable doubt. But in any case, yes, that Naruto file didn't open itself for its own entertainment.
 
shuttlt said:
Given that this analysis indicates that there is only a 2% chance of her being alive when we know she was in fact alive, is that perhaps a reason to wonder whether the analysis is correct? It may be of course, but 2% is small enough that it makes me wonder whether some factor hasn't been missed.
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There is evidence to suggest that gastric emptying may be somewhat slower in women than in men, primarily due to an increased lag time, with an average (t)1/2 of 86 min. vs. 51 min. in one study (R. Bennink, Eur. J. Nuc. Med. 1998).
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
Originally Posted by odeed
Just did some calculations from the paper used by LondonJohn and Kevin_Lowe, I make P(X>150)=1-0.98790=0.0121 or 1.21% but according to her friends testimony they started eating around 6pm, so there should be at least 98.79% chance of her friends killing her.
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Let me get this reasoning straight:

It's impossible for Meredith have been killed by her friends. It's also impossible for her to have been killed at 23:30. It's highly unlikely but possible1 that Meredith died at 21:10. So your conclusion is that she died at 23:30? :)

In any case this is our old friend the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy back in action. You can't just calculate the odds of something having happened as seen from the perspective of before it happened, and infer from it the odds of that event being real as opposed to faked or erroneous.
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You've put the reasoning in the incorrect order and left out the expert testimony of the real-life forensic pathologists summoned in the defence of Knox and Sollecito.

The people you're arguing against are not from the medical examiner's department. They're simply presenting data as they would at any murder investigation. It's the defence experts who calculated and defended a 22:00 estimate of time of death based on the stomach contents. They did not use the arithmetic that you and odeed just demonstrated.

Your job is to explain why this is so. You are required to defend the choice of this particular methodology against the standard set by the defence team. Citing papers is not sufficient. Why is your time of death arithmetic so different from theirs?
 
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moodstream said:
And you? Because you certainly used the one I cited when discussing AK/RS
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From your tone, I sense an innuendo that I am in some sort of dilemma--inclined to one standard for AK/RS, but a different one for Mignini. I think the same standards apply to both, although there are differences in substance and seriousness, and some other details.

Mignini was convicted of abusing his powers in ordering the phone tapping of police investigators and reporters during a then-unsolved investigation. He has been sentenced to 16 months jail time, but the sentence is suspended. Iirc, this is normal for such short sentences, and if he stays out of trouble for the following five years, he doesn't need to serve the time even if his appeal fails.

Mignini was acquitted of the more serious charge against him, ordering the wire tapping of a Florentine prosecutor.

In your post, Moodstream, you alleged that Mignini had been convicted of " ...abuse of power - aka corruption". "Corruption" requires that the public official receive financial gain. I have never seen any suggestion that Mignini received financial or other material consideration for anything that he is alleged to have done.
 
Machiavelli said:
12. There are no glass fragments in Merediths room (except one, but rather big). Someone instead did have small fragments on his cloths, but walked toward the kitchen.
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This is very interesting. I have not heard this before. By towards the kitchen, do you mean towards the area of the bathroom Guede used?

Your argument #1 1. The rear balcony is the logical point of entry…. - applies equally as an argument against a staged break in: if the rear balcony is more logical and better hidden, why would they pick another window. Why wouldn’t someone staging a break in make the logical choice?

#’s 2, 3 + 5: white paint .. on top of clothes that were tossed on the floor; big stone … on top of clothes.; The room was strewn with clothes - There were clothes on the floor. Filomena doesn’t remember leaving the room that way. That does not mean she remembers correctly. There is no non antidotal evidence regarding the state of the room prior to discovery on Nov 2.

You just insist the crime happened by version you prefer, but you are not proving it.

4 + 5. The drawers were not opened, not searched and not touched by the burglar. A burglar who looks for money would look first in drawers, and in drawers of all rooms; while no valuables were taken, even if easily transportable. – Money was taken. 300 euros. The crime is murder. Theft is a subset.

Again, you have invented a set of events – the burglar broke in, ransacked the room, stole money and valuables from every room, and, all facts that don’t support this set of events also disprove entry through the window with intent to burglar. That’s not so. You simply prove your invented set of events cannot be true.

Moreover, this same argument also works against a staged break in. If someone wanted a place to look like it was robbed, don’t you think they would steal something?

6,7 +9 no trace of soil, grass in Filomena’s room. no shoeprints on the soil beneath the window; no trace of soil on the external wall, nor on the sill.

No, it’s not impossible. It was a very dry October as it turns out. Besides, how hard did they look below the window and on the wall? Surely the police took official photos to back this claim such an important claim!

These two photos http://injusticeinperugia.com/hendry17.jpg http://injusticeinperugia.com/hendry19.jpg found at http://injusticeinperugia.com/RonHendry------2.html show that it’s entirely possible to have climbed from below the window without leaving an impression that would still be visible late the next day, and that it was not muddy such that soil or grass would inevitably be found on the bottom of Guede’s shoes.

Or, to say the converse, given the rock was not already inside the house, suppose AK/RS had just murdered their housemate, and really were stupid enough to go traipsing about the outside of the cottage looking for a rock to use, wouldn’t they also track in soil on the bottom of their shoes. Or, is it only necessary for Guede?

11. The opening of the window from the outside is dangerous and difficult even after braking the glass, mainly because the intruder doesn’t have a place to balance his body, to crouch, and would have to stick an arm though a guillotine shaped glass to reach the window latch. This operation is not feasible and not justified for a burglar. - I suppose that’s why second story break ins are just so darn uncommon!
 
TomM43 said:
From your tone, I sense an innuendo that I am in some sort of dilemma--inclined to one standard for AK/RS, but a different one for Mignini. I think the same standards apply to both, although there are differences in substance and seriousness, and some other details.

Mignini was convicted of abusing his powers in ordering the phone tapping of police investigators and reporters during a then-unsolved investigation. He has been sentenced to 16 months jail time, but the sentence is suspended. Iirc, this is normal for such short sentences, and if he stays out of trouble for the following five years, he doesn't need to serve the time even if his appeal fails.

Mignini was acquitted of the more serious charge against him, ordering the wire tapping of a Florentine prosecutor.

In your post, Moodstream, you alleged that Mignini had been convicted of " ...abuse of power - aka corruption". "Corruption" requires that the public official receive financial gain. I have never seen any suggestion that Mignini received financial or other material consideration for anything that he is alleged to have done.
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No, I am not at all making that claim, but I don't really agree. Mayor Daley in the US was very corrupt, but the driving force wasn't money. Of course I don't know, but for Mignini, I suspect he is motivated by ego and ambition.
 
moodstream said:
4 + 5. The drawers were not opened, not searched and not touched by the burglar. A burglar who looks for money would look first in drawers, and in drawers of all rooms; while no valuables were taken, even if easily transportable. – Money was taken. 300 euros. The crime is murder. Theft is a subset.

Again, you have invented a set of events
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It's not so much inventing events as lying about the known facts. You would think by now that everybody would know about the open drawer.
 
TomM43 said:
<snip>
In your post, Moodstream, you alleged that Mignini had been convicted of " ...abuse of power - aka corruption". "Corruption" requires that the public official receive financial gain. I have never seen any suggestion that Mignini received financial or other material consideration for anything that he is alleged to have done.
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I don't think so. Merriam Webster defines corruption in part as, “an impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle.” Dictionary.com uses the phrase, "perversion of integrity." Corruption happens when standards of duty, leadership or honesty are compromised for the sake of ideology or currency.

Money is only one form of currency; other forms of currency that can be exchanged are prestige, reputation, offices, favors and inclusion, to name a few. Obviously, ideologies can be corrupt exclusive of the concept of currency.
 
TomM43 said:
From your tone, I sense an innuendo that I am in some sort of dilemma--inclined to one standard for AK/RS, but a different one for Mignini. I think the same standards apply to both, although there are differences in substance and seriousness, and some other details.

Mignini was convicted of abusing his powers in ordering the phone tapping of police investigators and reporters during a then-unsolved investigation. He has been sentenced to 16 months jail time, but the sentence is suspended. Iirc, this is normal for such short sentences, and if he stays out of trouble for the following five years, he doesn't need to serve the time even if his appeal fails.
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I don't think he managed to stay out of trouble, I think maybe he went and did it again...

TomM43 said:
In your post, Moodstream, you alleged that Mignini had been convicted of " ...abuse of power - aka corruption". "Corruption" requires that the public official receive financial gain. I have never seen any suggestion that Mignini received financial or other material consideration for anything that he is alleged to have done.
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There's all sorts of corruption, and simple graft is the least of them in my opinion. There's places in this world where it is expected that public officials supplement their pitiful salaries with a little on the side. There's others where the laws basically ensure that you have to hand over a little extra to the appropriate officials to do business. That grease makes the system work, kind of like a little extra tax paid on some things. It may not be how it is where I come from, but in the final analysis it doesn't really matter that much if a little extra goes to the pocket of an official rather than the coffers of the state, which might then have to pay their representatives more.

The kind of abuse of power I'm seeing here is far more sinister in my opinion. Just how many people did Mignini file charges on in this case? I added them up once and someone had to add a couple more I'd missed. Isn't it rather strange that both families ended up having charges slapped on them? That journalists also had charges filed on them? Isn't it downright weird to file charges on bloggers overseas?

Who would use their power to that extreme to stifle criticism?

Someone with something to hide.
 
moodstream said:
No, I am not at all making that claim, but I don't really agree. Mayor Daley in the US was very corrupt, but the driving force wasn't money. Of course I don't know, but for Mignini, I suspect he is motivated by ego and ambition.
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"Vote early, vote often!"

It wasn't just Dick Daley though, "There's truth, there's justice, and then there's the Chicago way." Off the top of my head, since the real Mayor Daley left office there's been a mayor known for even more corruption who died under mysterious circumstances, at least three governors of Illinois that earned jail sentences, and the chairman of the House Ways and Means committee--hands on the purse strings of (then) two trillion dollars.

I think Perugia needs a new sister city.
 
On the question of the very tall and very short.... aren't there way more outliers than one would expect by looking at the distribution around the mean? That kind of analysis would tell you that the odds of somebody growing to 8 ft 11.1 would be astronomically remote, but clearly it has happened.

I don't mean to put any of TOD calculations into the same category of unusual as Robert Wadlow, but if we are already in the top 2% then you are starting to move in the direction where knowing what happens around the mean is somewhat less helpful.
 
shuttlt said:
On the question of the very tall and very short.... aren't there way more outliers than one would expect by looking at the distribution around the mean? That kind of analysis would tell you that the odds of somebody growing to 8 ft 11.1 would be astronomically remote, but clearly it has happened.

I don't mean to put any of TOD calculations into the same category of unusual as Robert Wadlow, but if we are already in the top 2% then you are starting to move in the direction where knowing what happens around the mean is somewhat less helpful.
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I don't imagine that the shape of the curve is going to be radically different, which is going to be the main thing - perhaps if we did a really rigorous study with 1000 women of Meredith's age at the time eating an identically-timed meal of pizza and apple crumble it might turn out that the odds of her dying before 21:30 are 97% or 98% or 99% or 99.9%, I don't think anyone knows for sure without doing the study. However regardless it's going to remain overwhelmingly likely that Meredith died at the earliest possible time consistent with the witnesses saying she did not get home until 21:05 or something similar, and it's going to remain reasonably medically certain that she was dead by 22:00, or maybe 22:30 at the very latest.
 
time for stomach to empty completely

Does anyone have an estimate for how much time it takes for the stomach to empty, from beginning to end? Thanks.
 
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