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- Herausgeber: goWare
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
In the context of a non-deterministic view of the world, probability is a number which reflects the degree of confidence someone has that a given statement or event is true, based on the information they have. Probability and probability calculus, on the other hand, are essential tools for those who wish to recognise uncertainty and manage it responsibly. This presentation of subjective probability (the only one possible) will enable even those who are not experts to acquire the correct knowledge of an instrument which is essential and necessary for dealing with the world around us. The text takes only one hour to read, but it will help you to avoid many mistakes and enable you to understand the origin of those you might have made in the past. The reader will also be able to appreciate many funny examples and paradoxes such as this one: statistics tell us that 20% of motorway car accidents are caused by drivers with high blood alcohol levels. It can then be derived that 80% of accidents are caused by sober drivers. Therefore, we should supply alcohol to those who drive on motorways!
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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Cover
Begin reading
Introduction – About the Author
Index of Cited Names
Table of Contents
Thank you for buying this ebook by Paolo MancaSubjective Probability: the Only Kind Possible
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© goWare 2017, Florence, first edition
ISBN: 978-88-6797-834-2
English Translation: Fiona Cunningham
Editing: goWare ebook team
Cover: Lorenzo Puliti
ePub Development: Marco Arrighi
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title page
Colophon
Introduction
1. Warning
2. Uncertainty
3. The simple lottery
4. Composite lotteries
5. Kolmogoroff’s formal model
6. Probability: the only possible definition
7. Conditional probability and Bayes’ Theorem
8. Random variables, mean value, risk
9. Independent random variables,exchangeable random variables
10. Jakob Bernoulli’s Theorem
11. The Frequentist “theory” of probability
12. Probability and statistics
13. Some so-called “Paradoxes of Probability”
14. Gambling and the theorem of the ruin of the gambler
15. Attempts to “objectify” probability.
16. The limits of probability and Fuzzy Logic
Plea in mitigation
Index
Introduction – About the Author
In the context of a non-deterministic view of the world, probability is a number which reflects the degree of confidence someone has that a given statement or event is true, based on the information they have. Probability and probability calculus, on the other hand, are essential tools for those who wish to recognise uncertainty and manage it responsibly.
This presentation of subjective probability (the only one possible) will enable even those who are not experts to acquire the correct knowledge of an instrument which is essential and necessary for dealing with the world around us.
The text takes only one hour to read, but it will help you to avoid many mistakes and enable you to understand the origin of those you might have made in the past.
The reader will also be able to appreciate many funny examples and paradoxes such as this one: statistics tell us that 20% of motorway car accidents are caused by drivers with high blood alcohol levels. It can then be derived that 80% of accidents are caused by sober drivers. Therefore, we should supply alcohol to those who drive on motorways!
* * *
Paolo Manca professor of Probability Calculus and Chair of Financial Mathematics at the University of Pisa, Director of the Masters Program of Finance and Financial Markets, currently works as a financial consultant, specialized in derivative valuations and savings protection. He is president of the association cerfidi (Centro Studi di Finanza e Diritto) and author of numerous publications in financial economics.
1. Warning
This book was prompted by the contents of some of the textbooks on probability and statistics that are on the reading lists even today, in 2016 AD1, of university courses, from reading entertaining drivel floating about on the internet, and by the survival of internet sites and television adverts that sell “foolproof” methods of winning at gambling and making a fortune on stock market.
I would never have believed it possible that such nonsense about probability could still be said and read, but there we are.
Although the fundamentals of the intrinsic nature of probability were laid out in the 1930s, especially by the Italian genius Bruno de Finetti (as always, appreciated more abroad than at home), and excellently restated and enlarged upon by distinguished scholars, it appears that their work was all in vain.
Being surprised that his ideas, simple yet brilliant, are still ignored, I felt obliged to set out, with all due humility, Bruno de Finetti’s thinking on probability, trying, as far as possible, to avoid technicalities, in order to be understood not only be those familiar with the field but also by those who are not familiar with mathematics and its jargon.
It is, perhaps, a foolhardy mission, since I will doubtless be criticised by experts and non-experts alike. The former will object to certain simplifications that, I myself acknowledge, to be rather insouciant; the latter will object to the more complex reasoning that I have been forced to resort to from time to time.
I think the great debates of the past centuries: the Ptolemaic system and the Copernican, the theories of evolution of species and creationist, to theories of relativity of Galileo and Einstein, nonetheless I am surprised to note that, even today, there is still debate about the nature of probability.
Yet probability can be expressed in this single sentence:
