All Questions
Tagged with philosophy probability
39
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Probability - Interview Question - Hidden Assumptions and Phrasing Issues
I’ve encountered the following seemingly simple probability interview question in my workplace:
Two reviewers were tasked with finding errors in a book. The first had found 40 errors and the other ...
- 133
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1
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Conditioning in Event Language VS Proposition Language
According to this video, one can freely decide to conceptualize probabilities in terms of either event language or proposition language. It states, "the mathematical rules are applied the same ...
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0
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Laplace's Rule of Succession and Bessel's Correction
Are applying Laplace's Rule of Succession to estimate a probability distribution from samples and applying Bessel's Correction (in reverse, perhaps) to estimate population statistics from sample ...
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2
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The correct physical interpretation of Binomial distribution and bernoulli trial in this example
We know that every random variable can have a probability distribution. Examples include the number of heads in many tosses, or the number of ones on a dice after many rolls and so on.
Suppose we use ...
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What is the fundamental difference between choosing a ball and rolling a die type of problems in probability?
Suppose, I have a box where I have $n$ balls out of which $b$ are blue. Hence, the probability of picking up a blue ball at random is $p=\frac{b}{n}$.
Now suppose, I know the total number of balls, ...
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Help with a weird bayesian result regarding advisors
I'm thinking about cases where you receive advice from two people who are (i) independent, and (ii) supposed to be competent on getting questions within this domain correct to a probability of >.5
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Why do we say that probability of an individual event in a continuous distribution is 0?
So I understand that the probability a<x<b is the definite integral from a to b of tye probability density function and that makes sense. If we use that same definition to define the ...
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How To Think About Measurability in $\mathbb{R}$
How do Platonist-leaning mathematicians think about the measurability/non-measurability of subsets of $X=\mathbb{R}\cap [0,1]$? For clarity, let's use "size" for the informal concept of ...
- 691
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Differing conclusion on a coin's side given two logically equivalent pieces of information
The following scenario was posed by my philosophy professor:
Consider the scenario where one day God decided to flip infinitely many fair coins (not stated if countably or uncountably infinite), ...
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3
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A Probability Thought Experiment
Scenario:
Lets say you have 100 trillion unique locks and their corresponding 100 trillion unique keys. You scramble them up, and then place all the locks and all the keys in two separate boxes.
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What is a fair coin?
The title of this question is almost a retorical question. My point is that there is no way to define probability in a non circular manner.
Let's say the probality of getting a tail when tossing a ...
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Is there a mathematical basis for the idea that this interpretation of confidence intervals is incorrect, or is it just frequentist philosophy?
Suppose the mean time it takes all workers in a particular city to get to work is estimated as $21$. A $95\%$ confident interval is calculated to be $(18.3, 23.7).$
According to this website, the ...
- 68.1k
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Increase in conditional probability for contradictory hypotheses in bayesian confirmation theory?
Although this question has a philosophical slant and my motivations for asking it are philosophical, I'm going to justify asking this in the mathematics stack exchange in two ways:
1) I've asked ...
- 126
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Expected Value Of A Process - Formalization / Foundations
Consider the question: Let $X$ be the random variable describing the number of rolls of a six-sided die needed till you see a $6$. What is $\mathbb{E}(X)$? Usually the answer given is $6$. What is ...
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How can we define something and have it translate to the real world?
I'm looking at a definition in my textbook (although my question applies to most definitions)
Let A, B be two events. Define $P(B|A)$ i.e. the probability of B given A, by:
$$P(B|A) = \frac{P (A\...
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