%\section{Conclusions and Future Work}

The principal purpose of this work was to address the concern of the National Academy of Sciences which stated in a report \cite{09NAS} that: 

\begin{quotation}
With the exception of nuclear DNA analysis, however, no forensic method has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source. \cite{09NAS}, p6
\end{quotation}

Our answer to this is, a novel approach for the evaluation of trace forensic evidence. With a data set donated by \cite{Karslake09}, made up of the infrared spectra of the clear coat layer of a range of cars, we showed that:

\begin{itemize}
\item CLIFF creates strong models with $low$ brittleness levels
\item The CLIFF selector, based on a PLA, can further reduce the brittleness of a model
\item The levels of brittleness differ significantly before and after the use of the CLIFF selector (Mann Whitney U test)
\end{itemize}

It is our intent that this work open the eyes of the forensic scientist to the real problem of $brittleness$ which exists in current forensic models. We hope in the future that the scientist, when verifying a model, they include a brittleness measure along with their evaluation of forensic evidence as done in this work. This will allow them to be confident that their result comes from a region or neighborhood of similar rather than dissimilar interpretation.

Although we contend that CLIFF can be applied to any type of trace evidence, in future work we hope to acquire more data sets to test CLIFF on. Also, direct comparison with other evaluation models will be investigated.



