Vsauce

The Fraud Caught by Math

Sign up to Morning Brew for free today: https://bit.ly/mbvsauce2
Thanks to Morning Brew for supporting Vsauce2.

“… for the root of all evils is the love of money,” states the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy — and no woman in 19th century America exemplifies that more than Hetty Green. She was a remarkable, talented financier who built an empire and forged headways for women in business. But in 1865, Hetty revealed the true depths of her greed when she orchestrated a will forgery that would pave the way for the use of mathematical analysis in the courtroom.

Hetty produced a copy of her Aunt Sylvia’s will leaving everything to her. It was suspicious, but no one could use math to prove it. Benjamin and Charles Peirce could, however, show that it was beyond statistically improbable that every feature of Sylvia Howland’s supposed signature was a perfect match to another sample. There’s a 1 in a million chance, and then there’s 1 in a sextillion — and their analysis of graphonomic probability showed without a doubt that one of the most successful women in American history had engaged in forgery to satisfy her own personal greed.

The meticulous analysis of downward handwriting strokes, the calculation and application of standard deviation, and explaining the utterly shocking scale of a coincidence proved that Hetty was a fake. And while math is often misapplied in the courtroom, exposing Hetty Green’s terrible attempt to defraud her own family marked an opportunity to use probability to get to the truth.

*** SOURCES ***

Meier, P., & Zabell, S. (1980). Benjamin Peirce and the Howland Will. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 75(371), 497–506.

“The Howland Will Case”, American Law Review, vol. 4, p. 625 (1870)

“Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America’s First Female Tycoon.” Charles Slack (2005)

“The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age.” Janet Wallach (2013)

*** LINKS ***

Vsauce2:
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@vsaucetwo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VsauceTwo
Talk Vsauce2 in The Create Unknown Discord: https://discord.gg/tyh7AVm
Vsauce2 on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/vsauce2/

Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Instagram: https://instagram.com/kevlieber
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/thecreateunknown

Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor

Editing by John Swan
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A

Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
https://www.etsy.com/shop/Craftality

Vsauce’s Curiosity Box: https://www.curiositybox.com/

#education #vsauce #crime

Products You May Like

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *