Good Thinking The Foundations of Probability and Its Applications

by Good, Irving John

• ISBN13: 9780486474380
• ISBN10: 0486474380
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-11-18
• Publisher: Dover Publications

Summary

Those sparkling essays by a gifted thinker offer philosophical views on the roots of statistical interference. A pioneer in the early development of computing, Irving J. Good made fundamental contributions to the theory of Bayesian inference and was a key member of the team that broke the German Enigma code during World War II. Good maintained that a grasp of probability is essential to answering both practical and philosophical questions. This compilation of his most accessible works concentrates on philosophical rather than mathematical subjects, ranging from rational decisions, randomness, and the nature of probability to operational research, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and chess.

Author Biography

Under the supervision of Alan Turing, Irving J. Good worked with the Bletchley Park cryptographers who cracked the German Enigma code. A prolific author of technical papers, Good was Professor of Statistics at Virginia Tech from 1969 until his retirement in 1994.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. ix
Bayesian Rationality
Rational Decisions (#26)	p. 3
Twenty-seven Principles of Rationality (#679)	p. 15
46656 Varieties of Bayesians (#765)	p. 20
The Bayesian Influence, or How to Sweep Subjectivism under the Carpet (#838)	p. 22
Probability
Which Comes First, Probability or Statistics (#85A)	p. 59
Kinds of Probability (#182)	p. 63
Subjective Probability as the Measure of a Non-measurable Set (#230)	p. 73
Random Thoughts about Randomness (#815)	p. 83
Some History of the Hierarchical Bayesian Methodology (#1230)	p. 95
Dynamic Probability, Computer Chess, and the Measurement of Knowledge (#938)	p. 106
Corroboration, Hypothesis Testing, Induction, and Simplicity
The White Shoe Is a Red Herring (#518)	p. 119
The White Shoe qua Herring Is Pink (#600)	p. 121
A Subjective Evaluation of Bode's Law and an ôObjectiveö Test for Approximate Numerical Rationality (#603B)	p. 122
Some Logic and History of Hypothesis Testing (#1234)	p. 129
Explicativity, Corroboration, and the Relative Odds of Hypotheses (#846)	p. 149
Information and Surprise
The Appropriate Mathematical Tools for Describing and Measuring Uncertainty (#43)	p. 173
On the Principle of Total Evidence (#508)	p. 178
A Little Learning Can Be Dangerous (#855)	p. 181
The Probabilistic Explication of Information, Evidence, Surprise, Causality, Explanation, and Utility (#659)	p. 184
Is the Size of Our Galaxy Surprising? (#814)	p. 193
Causality and Explanation
A Causal Calculus (#223B)	p. 197
A Simplification in the ôCausal Calculusö (#1336)	p. 218
Explicativity: A Mathematical Theory of Explanation with Statistical Applications (#1000)	p. 219
References	p. 239
Bibliography	p. 251
Subject Index of the Bibliography	p. 269
Name Index	p. 313
Subject Index	p. 317
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.