Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: A major issue with almost all previous methods of stature estimation is that before the method can be applied, an unknown individual must first be assigned to a certain sex or population. AIM OF THIS STUDY: The present study highlighted the differences in stature and footprint measurements between two populations of two different races and aimed to assess if escaping racial typology is possible and to determine the stature of unknown individuals before population determination while building their biological profiles. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: The study tested this alternative approach using two divergent statistical methodologies, namely, random forest and multiple regression analysis. The study was performed on 200 volunteered adults, and they were distributed on to two racial groups: 100 adult Egyptians and 100 adult Malaysians. The whole sample of each group was divided into two subgroups, namely, training and test subgroups. The training subgroup was used to build up a model, whereas the test subgroup was applied to validate the built model. RESULTS: Overall, there were insignificant differences between the two populations regarding the errors in estimating stature in all developed models although there were significant differences in the measurements of footprint and in stature between the two populations. CONCLUSION: The present study concluded that the models of stature estimation developed from one ethnic population could be applied on another population with satisfactory predictive performances, and one equation can represent distinct parts of the world.