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Record Nr. |
UNINA9910812514003321 |
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Autore |
McGrayne Sharon Bertsch |
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Titolo |
The theory that would not die : how Bayes' rule cracked the enigma code, hunted down Russian submarines, and emerged triumphant from two centuries of C / / Sharon Bertsch McGrayne |
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Pubbl/distr/stampa |
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New Haven, Connecticut : , : Yale University Press, , [2011] |
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©2011 |
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ISBN |
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1-283-10192-0 |
9786613101921 |
0-300-17509-4 |
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Descrizione fisica |
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1 online resource (288 p.) |
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Classificazione |
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Disciplina |
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Soggetti |
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Bayesian statistical decision theory - History |
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Lingua di pubblicazione |
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Formato |
Materiale a stampa |
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Livello bibliografico |
Monografia |
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Note generali |
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Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph |
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Nota di bibliografia |
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Includes bibliographical references and index. |
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Nota di contenuto |
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pt. 1. Enlightenment and the Anti-Bayesian reaction -- pt. 2. Second World War era -- pt. 3. The glorious revival -- pt. 4. To prove its worth -- pt. 5. Victory 211. |
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Sommario/riassunto |
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"Bayes' rule appears to be a straightforward, one-line theorem: by updating our initial beliefs with objective new information, we get a new and improved belief. To its adherents, it is an elegant statement about learning from experience. To its opponents, it is subjectivity run amok. In the first-ever account of Bayes' rule for general readers, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne explores this controversial theorem and the human obsessions surrounding it. She traces its discovery by an amateur mathematician in the 1740s through its development into roughly its modern form by French scientist Pierre Simon Laplace. She reveals why respected statisticians rendered it professionally taboo for 150 years--at the same time that practitioners relied on it to solve crises involving great uncertainty and scanty information, even breaking Germany's Enigma code during World War II, and explains how the advent of off-the-shelf computer technology in the 1980s proved to be a game-changer. Today, Bayes' rule is used everywhere from DNA de-coding to Homeland Security. Drawing on primary source material |
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