1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910132192803321

Autore

Weisberg Herbert I. <1944->

Titolo

Willful ignorance : the mismeasure of uncertainty / / Herbert I. Weisberg

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Hoboken, New Jersey : , : Wiley, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

1-118-83953-6

1-118-59441-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (454 p.)

Classificazione

MAT029000MAT000000MED078000

Disciplina

001.4/22

Soggetti

Research - Statistical methods

Probabilities

Research - Methodology

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

WILLFUL IGNORANCE; CONTENTS; PREFACE; ACKNOWLEDGMENTS; CHAPTER 1 THE OPPOSITE OF CERTAINTY; TWO DEAD ENDS; ANALYTICAL ENGINES; WHAT IS PROBABILITY?; UNCERTAINTY; WILLFUL IGNORANCE; TOWARD A NEW SCIENCE; CHAPTER 2 A QUIET REVOLUTION; THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE; INVENTING PROBABILITY; STATISTICS; THE TAMING OF CHANCE; THE IGNORANCE FALLACY; THE DILEMMA OF SCIENCE; CHAPTER 3 A MATTER OF CHANCE; ORIGINS; Probability; Risky Business; Games, Odds, and Gambling; THE FAMOUS CORRESPONDENCE; Breaking the Symmetry Barrier; The Interrupted Game; WHAT DID NOT HAPPEN NEXT; AGAINST THE ODDS; A Fateful Journey

Reasoning in Games of ChanceCHAPTER 4 HARDLY TOUCHED UPON; THE MATHEMATICS OF CHANCE; Juan Caramuel; Joseph Sauveur; Jacob Bernoulli; Thomas Strode; Two Scottish Refugees: John Arbuthnot and David Gregory; Isaac Newton; EMPIRICAL FREQUENCIES; John Graunt; William Petty; Three Dutch Masters: Huygens, Hudde, and De Witt; Jacob Bernoulli; Edmond Halley; A QUANTUM OF CERTAINTY; Why not Huygens or Leibniz?; What about Probabilism?; Bernoulli's Meditations; Across the Channel; CHAPTER 5 A MATHEMATICIAN OF BASEL;



PUBLICATION AT LAST; THE ART OF CONJECTURING; Part One: The Annotated Huygens

Part Two: Permutations and CombinationsPart Three: Games of Chance; Part Four: Civil, Moral, and Economic Matters; A TRAGIC ENDING; CHAPTER 6 A DEFECT OF CHARACTER; MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY; An Itinerant Teacher; Turning Point; Expanding His Empire; Defending His Empire; A Mixed Legacy; A FRACTION OF CHANCES; De Mensura Sortis; De Moivre's Epiphany; CHAPTER 7 CLASSICAL PROBABILITY; REVOLUTIONARY REVERENDS; The Reverend Thomas Bayes; The Reverend Richard Price; The Famous Essay; Philosophical Significance; FROM CHANCES TO PROBABILITY; The French Newton; Laplace's Philosophy of Probability

The Probability of CausesInsufficient Reason; A Coincidence?; CHAPTER 8 BABEL; THE GREAT UNRAVELING; PROBABILITY AS A RELATIVE FREQUENCY; The Meaning of Randomness; The Reference Class Problem; The Problem of the Single Case; PROBABILITY AS A LOGICAL RELATIONSHIP; Keynesian Probability; PROBABILITY AS A SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT; Another Cambridge Prodigy; Subjectivity Italian Style; Subjectivity and Statistics; PROBABILITY AS A PROPENSITY; An Unorthodox Thinker; A World of Propensities; CHAPTER 9 PROBABILITY AND REALITY; THE RAZOR'S EDGE; WHAT FISHER KNEW; WHAT REFERENCE CLASS?

The Monty Hall ProblemA POSTULATE OF IGNORANCE; Conditional Probabilities; Predicting Unique Events; Inside Information; The Two Envelope Problem; LAPLACE'S ERROR; CHAPTER 10 THE DECISION FACTORY; BEYOND MORAL CERTAINTY; Something Brewing; A Tale of Two Students; Contriving Ignorance; Statistical Significance; DECISIONS, DECISIONS; An Odd Couple; From Knowledge to Decisions; Rage Against the Machine; The Bayesian Revival; MACHINE-MADE KNOWLEDGE; CHAPTER 11 THE LOTTERY IN SCIENCE; SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS; Early Childhood Education; Aspirin for Prevention; FOOLED BY CAUSALITY; Heuristics and Biases

Are We Really So Dumb?

Sommario/riassunto

An original account of willful ignorance and how this principle relates to modern probability and statistical methods   Through a series of colorful stories about great thinkers and the problems they chose to solve, the author traces the historical evolution of probability and explains how statistical methods have helped to propel scientific research. However, the past success of statistics has depended on vast, deliberate simplifications amounting to willful ignorance, and this very success now threatens future advances in medicine, the social sciences, and other fields. Limitations of exist