He trained in Physics and electronic engineering at Imperial College, London, and in addition to the restoration of Hammerwood for over 20 years, for ten years sorted out every conceivable computer malfunction that anyone could throw at him. He saw the progress of computers since Fortran and has a collection of machines dating back to the Commodore Pet and the first Macintosh signed by all the designers on the inside of the case. Professionally he tired of people whose hard disc had failed from old age, blaming him instead of themselves and who kept no backups nor installation discs for the genuine and pirate software they were relying on! So instead he applies his knowledge to whatever problems you might have requiring computer expertise in court.
A training in Physics is particularly helpful: not only does it teach analysis of experimental data gathered from the real world but it requires the testing of theory against reality. Ingrained in the training are
His skills of probabilistic data-analysis upon the philosphy of "find the assumption" has led him to success with linguistic approaches to spam filtering. He has developed a revolutionary new four lines of code which in themselves filter between 30% and 60% of all spam emails reliably. If used widely, the code will kill the spam email industry.
David's work at Hammerwood, at first sight, appears wholly unconnected but it broadened his experience in unexpected ways. It involved substantial litigation in which on the one hand he worked alongside lawyers for some years and on the other led him to the operation of road traffic counters and associated data analysis. A local residents' association employed his traffic data expertise on a local congestion problem and his evidence was crucial in getting traffic lights installed on a dangerous junction. His broad experience in property management and the building trade makes gives him a most versatile experience from which to approach problems requiring professional witness evidence.
The tenant had produced line listings of what were said to be movements of equipment between premises, said to be the premises the subject of the court application. A forensic accountant had been called in to examine the computer data. His report was not very helpful: his computer analysis was more appropriate to police investigations seeking evidence of the downloading of paedophile material lurking in deleted areas of a hard disc. The forensic accountant determined that the company's computer record keeping was wholly unreliable as the data trail from item movement to paper trail to computer database could not be proved.
David was asked to look at the data and made an analysis of the printed computer records, determining residual stock levels from the stock movement listings. The resulting stock level data did not support the tenant's assertions of use. The Forensic Accountant having proved the computer record flawed meant that the Judge was unable to rely on it and had the difficult job of deciding whether to beleive witnesses for the tenant who said "we constantly took equipment to and from the building and used it for storage" and the witnesses for the landlord who said "we visited on 4 occasions over two years and saw no stock there and no changes to teh building or contents between visits". The case could have gone either way.
Realising the dilemma before the Judge, David applied probability theory to the computer records. Say there is a 1% error on data entry and 1 in 100 items are wrongly entered as having been recorded going to the wrong place. On a stock value of £10M, this alone would have serious consequences, especially when items were commonly moved 10 times the postulation would lead to 10% of th estock being misplaced. But for the purposes of the exercise say a 1 in 100 error is reasonable. For the same error to be applied twice to the same item would be 1 in 100 times 100 - ie 1 in 10,000. Inn fact there were 8 possible errors that could have been applied and for equipment to have been erroneously recorded going to the particular location code was 1 in 800. The company's business at the premises was said to have been storing televisions. But tracking through the data given to the Forensic Accountant, he found that one item was said to be a washing machine, stored there for over 2 years which the landlord's witnesses had not seen. For this to have been erroneously recorded as having been taken to the property was 1 in 800 and the probability of it having been erroneously recorded a second time would be 1 in 800 times 800, i.e. 1 in 64,000. So it was possible to tell the Judge that the probability of the computer record being wrong was 1 in 64,000 and that the location code which was said to have related to this property must have been another property nearby. The Judge found for the landlord as a result.
Alternatively call David on +44 (0) 1342 850594
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