The document describes how IBM Watson's cold case solution software works. Lieutenant Potts uploads all the evidence from the cold case of missing person Lauren. Watson processes the files and asks clarifying questions. Once it understands the case fully, Watson is able to accurately answer questions from Potts, providing a new lead. The software generates an evidence report explaining its conclusions. Potts is hopeful this new technology can solve Lauren's long cold case.

1. IBM WATSON
Cold Case Solutions
CJ Yang
Clinton McKay
Deepak Bhagchandani

2. Finding Lauren
It has been 16 months
since the Missing Lauren
case was started. However,
it was recently closed a
couple of months ago,
when they could not find
another lead.

3. This is Lieutenant Potts.
He has been on this case for a while and even
though the case is closed is really frustrated.

4. He receives a call from the chief saying that a new
and powerful computer program has been made
available by the government to solve cold cases.

5. He thinks about it for a while and becomes hopeful for Lauren
and her family.

6. Opportunity Space
Giving Watson all of the Evidence
from a Cold Case
We wanted to leverage Watson to analyze the finite corpus
of a closed cold case to help detectives find new leads and
reopen these cases
Connecting Old Cases
How can we leverage the corpus of old - solved and
unsolved cases to connect with new case data to use
Watson for finding new insights and leads

7. Assumptions
Finite set of Documents
Watson works best with a finite set of documents--adding
new documents means you will need to teach Watson how
to interpret the new documents
Yes/No Training
Watson learns corpora by asking yes/no questions about
its hypotheses
Watson is Expensive
Watson is expensive to run, so it should be consulted to
answer critical questions

8. Concept

9. Whenever Lieutenant Potts opens the IBM Watson Cold Case Solutions
program, he is greeted with the login screen.

10. After he enters his credentials, he can choose to open an existing case file or
create a new one. He’s already collected the evidence in Lauren’s case, so he’s
ready to create a new case file.

11. A new case number is automatically generated and Lieutenant Potts enters some
details about the case. He directs the program to a folder containing all of the
evidence in Lauren’s case and uploads the contents of the folder.

12. After he has saved the documents, Watson starts processing the evidence in the
background. A few moments later, Watson begins asking him to clear up some
ambiguities in the files.

13. Watson continues asking questions until all of the ambiguities between the
documents have been resolved. As Lieutenant Potts answers more questions,
Watson’s comprehension of the documents increases. The program shows Watson’s
learning progress at the bottom of the screen.

14. After Watson’s comprehension reaches 100%, Lieutenant Potts finds that he can
ask a question of Watson. He knows the stakes are high and he wants to check that
Watson knows what it’s talking about. To test Watson, he asks a question he
already knows the answer to.

15. Watson found the correct answer to his question based on the evidence in the file. Now
it’s time for the department-wide training session on how to write useful questions for
the IBM Watson Cold Case Solutions program.

16. After Lieutenant Potts and Watson have worked together to solve the case, he
prints the Evidence Report. There are step-by-step explanations of how Watson
came to its conclusions. Now that Potts knows which pieces of evidence Watson
used, he can re-trace the program’s steps. Armed with this information, he can
defend Watson’s findings as evidence in court.

17. Future Strategies
Leveraging high speed analysis
for opened cases
Using the high speed analysis to analyze new data from
previously closes cases. As new data and documents become
available they are uploaded into the Watson system for quick
analysis.

18. Thank you
Tarun Gangwani
Brandon Le
Marty Siegel

19. Appendix
System Map
Research
Our Process

21. Research
Videos and articles about Watson on Jeopardy
IBM’s Watson website
How Watson answers questions
Cold case investigation practices
Watson in different use cases (healthcare, law, education,
etc.)

22. Process and Sketches