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
Sharon Bertsch McGrayneamazon.com
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
its heart, Bayes runs counter to the deeply held conviction that modern science requires objectivity and precision. Bayes is a measure of belief. And it says that we can learn even from missing and inadequate data, from approximations, and from ignorance.
Sharon Bertsch McGrayne • 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
What Bayes discovered is that, as more and more balls were thrown, each new piece of information made his imaginary cue ball wobble back and forth within a more limited area.
Sharon Bertsch McGrayne • 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
In building a mathematical model of scientific thinking, where a reasonable person could develop a hypothesis and then evaluate it relentlessly in light of new knowledge, he became the first modern Bayesian. His system was enormously sensitive to new information.
Sharon Bertsch McGrayne • 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
Bayes decided that his goal was to learn the approximate probability of a future event he knew nothing about except its past, that is, the number of times it had occurred or failed to occur.
Sharon Bertsch McGrayne • 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
Bayes added that if he did not know enough to distinguish the position of the balls on his table, he would assume they were equally likely to fall anywhere on
Sharon Bertsch McGrayne • 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
At its heart, Bayes runs counter to the deeply held conviction that modern science requires objectivity and precision. Bayes is a measure of belief. And it says that we can learn even from missing and inadequate data, from approximations, and from ignorance.
Sharon Bertsch McGrayne • 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
In short, we can rely only on what we learn from experience.
Sharon Bertsch McGrayne • 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 then Laplace saw probability as the primary way to overcome uncertainty. Pounding the point home in one short paragraph, he wrote, “Probability is relative in part to this ignorance, in part to our knowledge . . . a state of indecision, . . . it’s impossible to announce with certainty.”17
Sharon Bertsch McGrayne • 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
Laplace continued his research throughout France’s political upheavals. In 1810 he announced the central limit theorem, one of the great scientific and statistical discoveries of all time. It asserts that, with some exceptions, any average of a large number of similar terms will have a normal, bell-shaped distribution.