The Theory That Would Not Die; How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy

by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

• ISBN13: 9780300169690
• ISBN10: 0300169698
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2011-05-17
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

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 yearsat 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 and interviews with statisticians and other scientists,The Theory That Would Not Dieis the riveting account of how a seemingly simple theorem ignited one of the greatest controversies of all time.

Author Biography

Sharon Bertsch McGrayne is the author of numerous books, including Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries and Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World. She is a prize-winning former reporter for Scripps-Howard, Gannett, Crain's, and other newspapers and has spoken at many scientific conferences, national laboratories, and universities in the United States and abroad. She lives in Seattle with her husband, George F. Bertsch, professor of physics at the University of Washington.

Table of Contents

Preface and Note to Readers	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xii
Enlightenment and the Anti-Bayesian Reaction	p. 1
Causes in the Air	p. 3
The Man Who Did Everything	p. 13
Many Doubts, Few Defenders	p. 34
Second World War Era	p. 59
Bayes Goes to War	p. 61
Dead and Buried Again	p. 87
The Glorious Revival	p. 89
Arthur Bailey	p. 91
From Tool to Theology	p. 97
Jerome Cornfield, Lung Cancer, and Heart Attacks	p. 108
There's Always a First Time	p. 119
46, 656 Varieties	p. 129
To Prove Its Worth	p. 137
Business Decisions	p. 139
Who Wrote The Federalist?	p. 154
The Cold Warrior	p. 163
Three Mile Island	p. 176
The Navy Searches	p. 182
Victory	p. 211
Eureka!	p. 213
Rosetta Stones	p. 233
Appendixes	p. 253
Dr. Fisher's Casebook	p. 253
Applying Bayes' Rule to Mammograms and Breast Cancer	p. 255
Notes	p. 259
Glossary	p. 271
Bibliography	p. 275
Index	p. 307
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.