Department of Anthropology Assistant Professor has published an article in the journal Forensic Anthropology, along with coauthors Dr. Stephen Ousley of the University of Tennessee (posthumously) and Dr. Ron Richardson of Mercyhurst University. The article is titled “MaMD Analytical 1.0: A Computer Program for Macromorphoscopic Trait Analysis” and covers the use of MaMD Analytical software, an analytical software package for forensic anthropologists to use during their routine casework. MaMD Analytical 1.0 replaces older, less robust methods of analysis and provides a greater number of reference groups for analysis.
Abstract: We outline the functionalities and application of MaMD Analytical—a new, freely available software package for the estimation of population affinity using human cranial macromorphoscopic (MMS) traits. MaMD Analytical captures MMS scores using line drawings following the procedures outlined by Hefner and Linde (2018). MaMD Analytical generates classifications (with estimated likelihoods) into forensically significant populations using an artificial neural network and reference samples drawn from the Macromorphoscopic Databank (MaMD). Summary data (sensitivity, specificity, x-validated classification accuracies) are provided. In this article, we apply MaMD Analytical to a large sample of identified individuals not used in the original model building to assess utility and demonstrate the typical outputs for MaMD Analytical. MaMD Analytical facilitates construction of the biological profile and provides a number of safeguards in summary statistics as a valuable addition to the forensic anthropological analysis toolkit. MaMD Analytical is written in the open-source R environment integrating a previously developed artificial neural network model to estimate population affinity using well-documented and validated approaches.
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