Stochastic modeling of a serial killer

Stochastic modeling of a serial killer.

We analyze the time pattern of the activity of a serial killer, who during 12 years had murdered 53 people. The plot of the cumulative number of murders as a function of time is of "Devil's staircase" type. The distribution of the intervals between murders (step length) follows a power law with the exponent of 1.4. We propose a model according to which the serial killer commits murders when neu...

Genesis of a Serial Killer

Serial Killer Typology

There are many ways to classify or create typologies of serial murderers, and one can be either a "lumper" or "splitter" with this endeavor. There are typologies that are based on the frequency and timing of serial behavior, typologies based on the presumed characteristics of the typical perpetrator, and typologies based on perpetrator motivations. There might as well be a typology based on age...

Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer

The American public is fascinated by horror and cruelty. Fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter and Michael Myers amuse moviegoers; but while these interesting beings and their crimes sometimes seem far-fetched, they can be all too close to reality. What happens when the characters of a movie come to life, or cinema imitates reality? Just mentioning “Helter Skelter” or “Zodiac” can send chil...

A Useful Family of Stochastic Processes for Modeling Shape Diffusions

 One of the new area of research emerging in the field of statistics is the shape analysis. Shape is defined as all the geometrical information of an object whose location, scale and orientation is not of interest. Diffusion in shape analysis can be studied via either perturbation of the key coordinates identifying the initial object or random evolution of the shape itself. Reviewing the f...