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EDRM Publishes Updated Statistical Sampling Guide with Public Comments: eDiscovery Trends

In 2012, we covered EDRM’s initial announcement of a new guide called Statistical Sampling Applied to Electronic Discovery and we covered the release of the updated guide (Release 2) back in December. That version of the guide has now been updated with feedback from the comment period.

The public comment period for EDRM’s Statistical Sampling Applied to Electronic Discovery, Release 2, published on the EDRM website here, concluded on January 9, 2015 and EDRM has announced the release of the updated guide today.

The guide ranges from the introductory and explanation of basic statistical terms (such as sample size, margin of error and confidence level) to more advanced concepts such as binomial distribution and hypergeometric distribution. Bring your brain.

The guide includes an accompanying Excel spreadsheet which can be downloaded from the page, EDRM Statistics Examples 20150123.xlsm, which implements relevant calculations supporting Sections 7, 8 and 9 of the 10 section guide. The spreadsheet was developed using Microsoft Excel 2013 and is an .xlsm file, meaning that it contains VBA code (macros), so you may have to adjust your security settings in order to view and use them. You’ll also want to read the guide first (especially sections 7 thru 10) as the Excel workbook is a bit cryptic.

Even though the public comment period has ended, comments can still be posted at the bottom of the EDRM Statistical Sampling Release 2 page, or emailed to the group at sampling@edrm.net or you can fill out their comment form here.

As I noted back in December, the old guide, from April of 2012, is still on the EDRM site. You’ll want to make sure you go to the new updated guide, located here.

So, what do you think? Do you perform statistical sampling to verify results within your eDiscovery process? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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