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Law, Probability and Risk Advance Access originally published online on October 27, 2009
Law, Probability and Risk 2009 8(3):289-302; doi:10.1093/lpr/mgp024
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© The Author [2009]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Match likelihood ratio for uncertain genotypes{dagger}

Mark W. Perlin*

Cybergenetics, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA

Joseph B. Kadane

Statistics Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA

Robin W. Cotton

Biomedical Forensic Sciences, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02118, USA

* Email: perlin{at}cybgen.com

Received on 7 November 2008. Revised on 7 September 2009. Accepted on 14 September 2009.


  Abstract

Genetic data are not necessarily fully informative, leading to uncertainty in an inferred genotype. The posterior genotype probability distribution incorporates the identification information present in the data. To compare uncertain genotypes, we introduce here a match likelihood ratio (MLR), a simple generalization of the likelihood ratio standardly used to understand the import of genetic evidence in forensic applications. The MLR gives the relative probability of a match between questioned evidence and a suspect, with respect to a match between the evidence and a relevant population. Coancestry can be naturally incorporated. We present illustrative examples and provide a detailed analysis and comparison for a two-person DNA mixture. We describe MLR's computation efficiencies when making multiple genotype comparisons and show how MLR was used to explain evidence in court. As statistical computing of forensic DNA inferences becomes more commonplace, the MLR may help in quantifying match identification information.

Keywords: coancestry; DNA; evidence; genotype; likelihood ratio; match; probability

{dagger} Presented as part of the Seventh International Conference on Forensic Inference and Statistics, The University of Lausanne, Switzerland, 21st to 23rd August, 2008.


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