Burden of Proof: A Review of Math on Trial—A Book Review

Creating a bridge to the future: Preparing new faculty to face changing expectations in a shifting context, Review of Higher Education 26 the public sphere are perfectly represented by these trials. Thus they serve as ideal illustrations of these errors and of the drastic consequences that faulty reasoning has on real lives " (p. x). The au-thors' strategy is to identify common mathematical errors and then illustrate how those errors arose in trials. They seek to accomplish two goals: first, to impress upon the general public the importance of being able to " distinguish whether the numbers brandished in our faces are legitimately providing information or being misused for dangerous ends " ; second, " to identify the most important errors that have actually occurred " so that such mistakes can be eliminated in the future. These are worthy if anodyne goals, and I would not dare argue against them. But the claims that Schneps and Colmez make are strong ones and prompt many questions. Do they adequately support their contention that mathematics has a " disastrous record of causing judicial error? " How influential are mathematical arguments, anyway? Are mathematical arguments more problematic A cross discipline study of reform teaching by university science and mathematics faculty, Observation of reform teaching in undergraduate level mathematics and science courses, In Math on Trial, Leila Schneps and Coralie Col-mez write about the abuse of mathematical arguments in criminal trials and how these flawed arguments " have sent innocent people to prison " (p. ix). Indeed, people " saw their lives ripped apart by simple mathematical errors. " The purpose of focusing on these errors, despite mathematics' " relatively rare use in trials " (p. x), is " that many of the common mathematical fallacies that pervade