In the North American court system, a defendant is assumed innocent until proven
ID: 3044894 • Letter: I
Question
In the North American court system, a defendant is assumed innocent until proven guilty. In an ideal world, we would expect that the truly innocent will always go free, whereas the truly guilty ones will always be convicted. Now, let us tackle the following questions?
In the context of the Type I error and Type II error, can you relate a court trial scenario in terms of these two errors?
What would be your ideal situation if you are the defendant?
What would be your ideal situation if you are the prosecuting attorney?
Lastly, what do you think of the scenario of an ideal world where we expect that no innocent will be found guilty and all guilty will be convicted in the context of Type I error and Type II error?
Explanation / Answer
In the theory of testing hypothesis we have two hypothesis 1)Null hypothesis 2)Alternative Hypothesis. Type-1 error is defined as the error which occurs if a true null hypothesis is rejected. Type-2 error occurs if a false alternative hypothesis is accepted. In the courtroom scenario , the null hypothesis is that the defedant is innocent and alternative is that s/he is guilty. So, the type-1 error occurs in courtroom scenario when an innocent defendant is conviceted of crime and a type-2 error occurs if a guilty defendant is let off.
If I am an guilty it would be ideal for me if a type-2 error occurs in the courtroom as type-2 error will let me go as innocent even if I am gulty.
Form the viewpoint of attorney occurence of a type-1 error would be most ideal situation, as that will make the defent proven guilty.
Lastlytwo types of error cannot be minimized simultaneously. Hence we must keep chance of occurence of one(prefereably more severe one) as low as possible and then try to minimize the other. In practical situation it is always better to keep the chance of type-1 error at minimum then trying to minimize type-2 error as much as possible