Chapter 890: It Makes Perfect Sense

Wang Chuanxing made a copy of the paper containing Jiang Yuan's death age assessments and handed it to the professors to read.

Professors Sun, Li, and Zhang drew lines on the paper, dividing the page into three sections, and then began their verification process.

Reviewing someone else's work and providing an evaluation was something they were all too familiar with; it was a habit.

Despite this, the three of them remained extremely cautious and careful.

Determining the age at death of a corpse is a highly difficult and academically valuable task. Furthermore, the determination of age at death is closely linked to the development and application of scientific technology.

In other words, making mistakes is quite normal, and discrepancies are even more common.

To reduce errors and avoid mistakes, everyone naturally employs various methods and attempts a wide range of solutions. A typical approach, for instance, is using more fitting regression equations.

Regression equations are not secret martial arts manuals; they are essentially the results of statistical analysis. However, they are publicly available—yet they can also feel like secret manuals. If a scholar researches or calculates a particularly effective regression equation, they can choose not to publish it and keep it for their own use. This is especially true today, as commercial projects become more frequent; even if scholars want to publish their new research, commercial companies might not be willing to let them.

Furthermore, the most important aspect of a regression equation is not the equation itself, but its prerequisites—that is, under what conditions it should be used.

This point is very much like a secret martial arts manual. The same regression equation might be highly suitable for Caucasians, or even more specifically, for people of European descent. If you take it and apply it to East Asians, whether it works well or whether you need to adjust it—and where to add a coefficient—is a very subtle and "secret manual" part of the process.

To take it a step further, a regression equation that is very suitable for determining age at death based on the nasal bone of East Asians might not necessarily be accurate for all East Asians. After all, East Asians include the Sino-Tibetan, Uralic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Eskimo-Aleut (Paleosiberian), Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Indigenous American, and Polynesian language families. And regarding the physical characteristics of the Chinese people alone, there are seven major classifications, including the Bohai, North China, Northwest, Central Plains, Miao-Yao, Baiyue, and North Asian types. (Note)

Additionally, the temperature and humidity of the area where the corpse was found, the altitude, whether it was above or below ground, and the local classification of insects or microorganisms will all affect the statistical results.

Therefore, making a rough judgment is easy—any general regression equation will do—but to be accurate and meticulous, the difficulty becomes immense.

At the very least, you must first distinguish the various attributes of the skeletal remains, then find the appropriate regression equation. If none are suitable, you might even have to develop a new set yourself. As for the final calculation, that is actually the least valuable part.

For Professors Sun, Li, and Zhang, mastering and skillfully using those common regression equations was not a problem at all. Determining the race and environmental factors of the remains was also basic training.

But if you want to refine and refine again, you will inevitably hit a bottleneck.

The three of them first checked the remains they were most confident about. As they calculated, they began to hesitate.

Each set of remains had its own unique circumstances. Once the familiar and easy ones were verified, the rest had to be... looked up in books.

Professor Sun was the first to let go of his pride, saying, "Let me check," and had his student bring over his laptop.

Seeing this, Professors Li and Zhang no longer stood on ceremony. They all took out their computers and tablets, or sent messages to students in the lab, asking them to send over the necessary regression equations.

In anthropology, regression equations come in sets of six, seven, or even a dozen. People might memorize the common ones, but they generally rely on looking up the less common ones. Especially as professors, they rarely perform the calculations themselves in their daily work. Even if they remember some, they wouldn't dare use them from memory; making a mistake would be truly embarrassing.

However, academics don't really care about whether they can memorize equations. They focused all their energy on verifying the age at death.

There were quite a few skeletal remains from the Yongwang Tomb, but the situation was complex. The Yongwang's remains were in a coffin, the buried consort was interred later, and the conditions within the tomb were different. Furthermore, this tomb had actually been looted, though not deeply enough to prevent the remains from being exposed early on.

For anthropologists, this series of changes was like a problem that kept getting harder.

Even though it was just verification, because the age range Jiang Yuan provided was extremely narrow, it gave them a headache.

*Click, click, click, click. *

The printer kept running.

"Li Jiaoshou," Wang Chuanxing handed another printed sheet to the nearest professor, saying, "This is the death age assessment Jiang Yuan just finished."

"Ah, he... he did another 10?" Li Jiaoshou glanced at it, finding it unbelievable.

But to say Jiang Yuan was doing it haphazardly—he looked down at the remains he had verified himself and clearly couldn't say such a thing.

"How are things on your end?" Li Jiaoshou asked the other two in a low voice.

"I haven't found any issues with my verification. There's at most a difference of one or two years, depending on the values everyone chose," Professor Zhang said.

Professor Sun took out his phone and said, "Let me ask my students... Yes, the verifications are all correct."

Li Jiaoshou raised his eyebrows, took the 10 numbers he had just received, divided them among the three, and picked a random corpse number and age to check against the photos and the data collected at the scene.

The results were naturally consistent.

By the time he finished verifying, Li Jiaoshou felt he had overused his brain. He laughed, pushed his notebook aside, and said, "Professor Tao has found us a powerful reinforcement."

"That's because you haven't had much contact with Jiang Yuan, and you don't interact much with the criminal investigation circle," Tao Yajie laughed. "Forensic expert Jiang specializes in solving major and difficult cases. He has used anthropology to solve cases countless times."

"No wonder. People in criminal investigation like to make precise judgments, right?" Li Jiaoshou found an excuse for himself.

Jiang Yuan looked up and smiled. "Not necessarily. Accuracy is still the top priority. If there isn't an especially urgent need, we generally set 'not making mistakes' as our most basic requirement."

"That's true." Li Jiaoshou followed Jiang Yuan's lead, but upon reflection, he suddenly felt a hint of "humble-bragging" in the air.

You set "not making mistakes" as your basic goal, yet you managed to pinpoint the age at death of the remains to the exact year?

From the perspective of anthropology, this could almost be considered a form of showing off.

"Wait for me a few more minutes." Jiang Yuan had no intention of chatting; after saying a few words, he lowered his head and got back to work.

In less than 10 minutes, Jiang Yuan handed the A4 paper in front of him to Wang Chuanxing, then smiled and said, "With this, the death age assessment is complete. What should we do next?"

The three distracted professors couldn't help but look up.

"The death age assessment... is all done?" They didn't know how to express themselves.

Actually, if these experts had been in any fingerprint groups, forensic groups, or trace evidence groups, they absolutely wouldn't have argued with Jiang Yuan about death age assessment.

Jiang Yuan's LV6 death time assessment wasn't omniscient, nor was it perfectly suited for death age assessment, but having this level of skill combined with LV3 forensic anthropology was still crushing. Compared to the top-tier experts who only reached LV3, it was a level that could defeat gods and Buddhas alike.

"Next, I'll handle the determination of the cause of death." Jiang Yuan arranged the task for himself, and it sounded so reasonable that no one could find fault with it.

The three professors nodded subconsciously.