Decisions, Uncertainty, and All That

An Example of Bayesian Inference

Volume 3, Issue 3
Summer 1993

"There are very few things which we know; which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning; and when they cannot, it's a sign our Knowledge of them is very small and confus'd."
    - John Arbuthnot 1692

"When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind."
    - William Thompson, Lord Kelvin