Government
Valid application of statistics is a requirement of modern governing bodies, including all levels of government. Analysis & Inference, Inc. has worked with numerous local, state, and federal government entities, including the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Postal Service, state attorneys general, state public service commissions, and the New York City and Los Angeles County governments.
Case Histories
- Age discrimination and a city police department
- Cheating on a police examination for promotion
- Commercial real estate valuation using massive dataset
- Environmental education survey study
- Experimental design for performance of garbage trucks
- Forecasting issue in federal audit of state social services department
- Performance metrics in telecom
- Quantifying theft from parking meters in New York City using research design and modeling I
- Race discrimination and a city police department
- Sampling for financial management for the U.S. Geological Survey
- Sampling methodology in challenges to disallowances of federal aid to states
- Stipulation to use sampling to determine quality of city social service delivery
- Timeliness of delivery of special education services
Case: Sampling for financial management for the U.S. Geological Survey
How to exert greater management control over certain expenses for the Office of Accounting and Financial Management.The project included drafting and revising statistical sampling plans, implementing the samples on a monthly or quarterly basis, and analyzing the results. Samples were grouped by expense amount, geographical region and division.
Improved financial management, including credit card usage, unused grant funds, accounts receivable, and travel expenses. The sampling plans and analyses were successfully defended before USGS outside auditor.
Case: Quantifying theft from parking meters in New York City using research design and modeling
New York City contracted with Brink's Inc. to collect coins from parking meters. After city officials were informed that some of Brinks' employees had been stealing, six were arrested and convicted of larceny. The city filed a complaint against Brink's for negligence in supervising its employees and for breaching the contract. The case came to trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. (The City had no direct knowledge of the exact amount of money that had been stolen.)Analysis & Inference's assignment was to estimate the amount stolen by comparing Brinks' actual collections with estimates of how much should have been collected. Those estimates, generated by studying revenues of the subsequent contractor for matched months and boroughs and regression modeling of expected revenues versus actual, were successfully presented before a jury in the District Court.
In upholding the decision for the city, Judge Weinfeld of the United States Court of Appeals quoted the testimony of Analysis & Inference against criticisms that the statistical estimate was not precise: "Dr. Fairley said the purpose of [statistical analysis] is: what is the most reasonable estimate of the difference and what [can you] most reasonably attribute the difference? That's the best you can do." Final judgment against Brink's was $2.5 million of which $1 million was compensatory and $1.5 was punitive.