“I’m gonna use my formula sheets and that’s the only way I’m gonna do stuff.”
blog.mrmeyer.com
blog.mrmeyer.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYqXlRQrBN4
I found the choice of accents in the reconstruction interesting. The "dummy" expert witness had a southern accent, and the "smart" attorney had a mid-western/northern accent. In the actual deposition, both guys had southern accents.
Maybe it's unfair of me, but I think it shows bias on the part of the NYT.
I actually thought the lawyer's accent was the stronger one - maybe because it's less like mine. I'm from upstate NY originally, living in Ohio for the last 20 years.
Anyway, my comment was pretty US-centric to begin with, probably not that useful to folks from other countries.
Cheers.
The lawyer deposing him isn't an "expert" and isn't allowed to introduce evidence by himself (even if it is patently obvious). The only tool he has is to ask the expert in front of him. If the expert refuses to comply and show himself to be wrong, the lawyer has no recourse but to bring his own expert to court to refute him.
I don't know what went wrong here (measurements were off, conversion was off, drawing wasn't to scale, whole thing is wrong), but if the expert admits something isn't right, it would presumably allow the whole thing to be excluded. The expert is trying to recover and cover his ass here. He knows something isn't right, but probably knows that 68 feet is the right answer. Rather than sink his whole ship, he's trying to focus on the actual accident.
I think his testimony is worthless based on his mistake and the deposing lawyer was right to push the issue.
I am not a lawyer.
From that original Youtube video, I noticed more of a melodic drawl in the lawyer's voice in the original than the expert's voice.
It does seem to me that NYT mixed up the accents, and that resulted from a bias on their part, however unintentional.
Unless you're suggesting another civil war, I think you've chosen the wrong word.
Or, for all you know they were hired for the opposite rolls, but during takes they each exhibited affinity for the opposite role, and the casting was switched.
About zero, considering the actual deposition video is available on YouTube.
They're trying to get eyeballs to the NYT and not Youtube or anywhere else. They control that media now, they can re-use it later or do whatever they want with it.
I had to think for a minute to work out how to convert 3 3/16" to scale by 20 feet to the inch. Now, if you'd said 8cm at 240:1 scale I'd have got there a lot quicker.
I'm always amazed at why the USA still uses the imperial system...
http://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000004093067/verbati...
Think of saying "wow, that's a great idea!" to your best friend that has a great idea. Then think of saying that to the office idiot who just suggested they can rebuild your entire system in a weekend.
Disclosure: I work in speech recognition systems.
"Interpreting tone, accents, stress level, pacing, volume, and a variety of other things from a transcript" is a pretty good description of a director's job.
This project just uses the verbatim transcript as a screenplay, and runs with it. They are very honest about the fact that they are aiming for something between faithful re-creation and entertainment.
So we shouldn't be surprised by the shocking level of incompetence of the expert witness on display here. Most of us live in a bubble where we never come into contact with people like this, but they're everywhere.
He fiddled with the calculator, perhaps as he did it, he recognized his drawing didn't add up to the stated 68 feet (1 inch to 20 ft scale) and stonewalled, knowing that if he did the calculation for them, he would have demonstrated himself incorrect.
But yeah, incompetent people are everywhere.
I can totally imagine that if he'd done the sum as instructed, he'd be facing a dressing down from his boss as to why he didn't follow the simple "not without reference materials" script. I imagine they're probably instructed to avoid doing maths under pressure in general, because that's a terrible idea for any normal person. Real life is not a maths exam.
Edit: It turns out he was his own boss, but I think the above still applies.
"Doctor."
Sometimes we fail spectacularly at momentous points in our lives. That doesn't invalidate everything we've ever done and prove we are and will always be the incompetent frauds we appear to be, no more than any by other failure, although that's what it feels like when you're on trial. I would still rather receive medical treatment by an MD who graduated last in their class than by the lawyer who pointed out that doctor's biggest mistake.
More than anything, to me, the expert looks unprepared, which is forgivable, especially for someone with little legal experience. Also, fractions on a tenkey? He would have done better on an abacus.
My mom (in her 60s) still knows where to apply compounding growth formulae, and how to estimate them.
If your memory is beginning to go on you to the point where you can no longer effectively do your job you should learn to do something which requires less memory.
I agree with what another poster has said [1]. It's likely this expert knew how to use the calculator but then saw what the answer came up as and realized, "Oh shit!". But maybe this was the "right" tactic to go with, if the expert wanted to be able to weasel his way out of a mistake (perhaps he just made a typo when he initially did the work?) without technically perjuring himself.
Edit: Whoops, meant this for the sibling comment.
Here's what would be a perfectly understandable answer: "I don't recall how I got 68 when now that I calculate it, the answer appears to be 63.75" Because sure, it could be there was a typo in the initial work of the expert, and it has only now been revealed. But this is not what the expert admits to failing to. He's asked point blank if he can use a calculator: "Will you please convert 3 / 16ths to a decimal value...Can you?" And he says, "I will not do it without my reference material".
Again, completely understandable if he says "I will not do it without a calculator". That is not the issue of contention here.
I'm a bit surprised to see people jump to his defense. Calculations like these are the foundation of the science and "science" that is used to convict/fuck people over. And even though this seems to be a minor case, a difference of feet in any kind of reconstruction (scientific or witness testimony) can mean the difference between conviction and acquittal. This is just one case that has been spotted by a writer/artist to dramatize for humorous effect. There are countless more, involving less obvious mathematical errors, that may impact the justice system. That we can't even agree that this witness is either too incompetent to trust the evidence that he's provided to his side, or too disingenuous to admit his mistake...and we wonder why shit happens?
Once the opposing counsel opens the door to extemporaneous testimony, you're screwed as a witness, because the next question may not be 1+1=2, it may be something else.
Also, is this really "middle school math" (as described in the NYT's caption)? Decimal numbers were covered in 4th/5th grade I thought? (I remember learning algebra and geometry in 7th and 8th grades)
What?! Do US students use binary until 4th grade? This is an honest question, I don't think I understand what exactly you meant here
[1] https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/precision-math-decim...
Every time I hear stories about math education in US, it frightens me
The case is from 2004, which is not really this day and age in technological terms.
I would think an expert witness need to testify to something more than "yep that's my result".
2x2=4, but anyway a cashier receiving or handing out 20 notes of 20 dollars should still use a calculator to get the total - since otherwise once in a blue moon a tired person will mistakenly enter it as 200. This particular combination is a "common" source of cash handling mistakes that ocassionally happens in every organization that has a lot of such deals, not a fictional example.
The examples you give about programming are about understanding concepts, not menial tasks. If a programmer needs to reference a e.g. particular table/column name it often is appropriate as a policy to copy and paste it instead of retyping a dozen obvous characters; I've seen people that are paranoid enough to do that every time in production environments where testing won't catch that and you need a script to run properly the first time. Being careful and re-reading will catch most of the typos, but not all. When that's not good enough, you have to reduce risks of introducing such typos in the first place even if it takes more time to copy/paste.
So yes, if you need to convert 3/16 to decimal in practical engineering situation - yes, you absolutely will use a calculator or something comparable every single time, and possibly repeat it twice to verify against typos. If you believe that you can do that in your head - sorry, you and everyone else will make a stupid mistake once every thousand times, and that is not good enough.
>>You have to do a lookup every time you need to convert a fraction to a decimal using a calculator?
I'm not criticizing those who use a calculator to convert a fraction to a decimal. I was criticizing those who need a reference in addition to the calculator, as the witness claimed he needed.
I think we're mostly in agreement.
"I am the president of a small Missouri based corporation Accident Reconstruction Limited."
"[An accident reconstructionist] is someone who mathematically accesses, usually traffic accidents, and applies known formulas and physics laws to the occurrences that happened. And usually what it boils down to in the final draw is an assessment of time and distance on the sequence, or the events that occurred during the accident."
....
[The mathematical expert witness is asked to covert his own drawings to real units using his own scale. The problem is (3 + 3/16) * ~20 = 68. Calculator in hand, he has no idea how a scale works. In reality, he probably just measures these things and puts the numbers in a computer. So he has no idea if the computer is spitting back the correct information.]
....
"Are you capable of deriving any of these formulas?"
"Of deriving them? No sir. Not generally. We have been taught of how to look them up in the book. We have been taught in the use of them. But to break them down and derive them back to the square root and kinetic energy, no."
...
[The mathematical expert witness is then given the basic formula for applying a scale (multiplication). drawing * scale = answer. The mathematical expert then claims that he does not know how to multiply a fraction by 20 without a "formula sheet".]