PILOT STUDY

Screening the Handwriting of Different Individiuals Using CEDAR-FOX

Abstract

The use of computer software to assist in screening a database of anonymous writings for potential authorship links is investigated. Large databases of writings, such as the New Zealand Police Document Examination Section’s Anonymous Letter Database (ALD) can be unwieldy and time consuming to search manually. CEDAR- FOX is software which can perform a similar role with documents scanned into a computer using some manual processing. The results generated by CEDAR-FOX, the amount of user intervention required, and the time taken to process documents in CEDAR-FOX were examined. On the whole, CEDAR-FOX performed well as a filtering tool, highly ranking documents completed by a common author. However, a number of poor performance results were also obtained. Further research into the operating processes of CEDAR-FOX may explain these observations. It is concluded that CEDAR-FOX cannot yet replace the ALD, although it can operate as a complementary tool for identifying possible authors of handwriting from a large pool.

Purchase Article for $10