THE INTERPRETATION OF ELEMENTAL COMPOSITION MEASUREMENTS FROM FORENSIC GLASS EVIDENCE .1.

Glass fragments are known to transfer to the clothing of a person brea king a window. These fragments may be used as evidence, associating th e breaker to the crime. Recent work in the characterization of glass e vidence by its elemental composition has required a framework for the evaluation of this data. Traditional treatment of the data involves de termining the mean concentration and the standard deviation for each e lement and then comparing the means using a '3 sigma rule' and testing the match criteria with a strict range overlap for each of the elemen ts. This paper will demonstrate a statistical test that has advantages over the '3 sigma rule' approach.