Recently, Brendon Brewer posted an interesting piece titled “Life in the Universe” on how the information that life appeared early in Earth’s history affects one’s inferences about whether it is easy to form life or if life is rare. Its…
Category: Probability Theory
FQXi Essay titled “The Deeper Roles of Mathematics in Physical Laws”
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This week I submitted my essay to the 2015 FQXi Essay Contest, Trick or Truth?, which is focused on the surprising success of mathematics and its relationship between mathematics and physics. My essay titled “The Deeper Roles of Mathematics in…
Textbooks on Bayesian Probability Theory
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I have been teaching the course titled “Bayesian Data Analysis” for almost 8 years now at the University at Albany. Here is a course description: Course Description: Introduction to both the principles and practice of Bayesian and maximum entropy methods…
Information and the Two Child Problem
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Last year (wow…time flies), I posted a solution to the Two Child problem using Bayes theorem. If you are unfamiliar with this problem, you may want to read that post first. There has continued to be discussion on this topic…
Bayes Theorem and our poor sense for Probability
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One of the groups I belong to on LinkedIn posted an interesting problem that was published in a New Scientist article on the Gathering for Gardner meeting. The problem goes like this: I have two children. One is a boy…