The deployment of conditional probability distributions for death time estimation

The temperature based algorithm known as the Nomogram Method for the determination of a 95.45% death-time interval can be combined with non-temperature based (NTB) findings in the so called Compound Method (CM). The impact of such integration on the probability yielded by the resulting interval has however neither been described nor exploited. In fact the interval after integration of NTB findings rarely yields 95.45% probability. We present a method, based on the conditional probability distribution that can be calculated if the NTB findings are taken into account, which ensures the probability inside the interval to be 95.45%. The method was successfully applied to a set of 53 cases published by Henssge et al. and led to a reduction of the interval width up to more than 15% compared to the CM interval, whereas in other cases the interval width increased due to probability content of the CM intervals below 95.45%. A spreadsheet file in which the method proposed in this paper is implemented can be obtained upon email request from the authors. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.