A Bayesian Approach to Adult Human Age Estimation from Dental Observations by Johanson's Age Changes

Abstract

Much of the data which appears in the forensic and archaeological literature is ordinal or categorical. This is particularly true of the age related indicators presented by Gustafson in his method of human adult age estimation using the structural changes in human teeth. This technique is still being modified and elaborated. However, the statistical methods of regression analysis employed by Gustafson and others are not particularly appropriate to this type of data, but are still employed because alternatives have not yet been explored. This paper presents a novel approach based upon the application of Bayes' theorem to ordinal and categorical data, which overcomes many of the problems associated with regression analysis.