tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112258799568696095.post3513343594069152853..comments2024-03-06T13:50:29.718+05:30Comments on E's flat, ah's flat too: Another random noteRahul Siddharthanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04809667965184094636noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112258799568696095.post-92185366315895195322008-04-15T18:10:00.000+05:302008-04-15T18:10:00.000+05:30Thanks. I am not sure whether I am a trained mathe...Thanks. I am not sure whether I am a trained mathematician; it was passion. It is more or less extinct now and I feel that I need to learn some probability and statistics to 'understand' the world.gaddeswaruphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16509075029154476375noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112258799568696095.post-58534158587271240512008-04-15T17:57:00.000+05:302008-04-15T17:57:00.000+05:30As I remember, you're a trained mathematician so s...As I remember, you're a trained mathematician so should not be new to a lot of it.<BR/><BR/>I learned much of my basic probability theory as a kid from Martin Gardner (collections of his Scientific American columns), in general they are fun books to read. I never did any really good courses and don't know any very good standard books. Recently I've been looking at E T Jaynes's book (much of it available online <A HREF="http://omega.albany.edu:8008/JaynesBook" REL="nofollow">here</A>). Jaynes was a physicist who can take much of the credit for the Bayesian revolution in statistics, and he more or less invented the maximum entropy technique (though he says it was all known already to Gibbs in the 19th century). He fought with "traditional" statisticians for much of his career and a lot of his writing is therefore rather polemical, but fun to read and insightful.Rahul Siddharthanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04809667965184094636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112258799568696095.post-39254649875231655712008-04-15T17:44:00.000+05:302008-04-15T17:44:00.000+05:30May be you can suggest some good boks. I started w...May be you can suggest some good boks. I started with "Weighng the odds" by David Williams and find it challenging. Now I am in the hat problem and the miraculous appearence of 1/e as the limit of a probability as n tends to infinity.gaddeswaruphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16509075029154476375noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112258799568696095.post-1474231726433348172008-04-15T17:29:00.000+05:302008-04-15T17:29:00.000+05:30gs - yes, it's not trivial, and even experts somet...gs - yes, it's not trivial, and even experts sometimes struggle with probability theory. (According to Martin Gardner, d'Alembert couldn't see that flipping a coin twice is the same as flipping two coins once, and he believed that a run of heads makes tails more likely -- the popular bogus "law of averages"). But if an experimental psychologist has not studied probability and statistics, his paper should be vetted by someone else who has. (That goes for most other experimentalists.)<BR/><BR/>For many, it may not be trivial that all numbers aren't equally likely when rolling a pair of dice (7 is the most likely, 2 and 12 the least). But you can't write a paper on dice-rolling without knowing that.<BR/><BR/>(I have seen some responses online that only a few papers on cognitive dissonance are flawed in this way, the majority of the literature is OK, and Chen has an axe to grind. I don't know about that.)Rahul Siddharthanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04809667965184094636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3112258799568696095.post-66748321106145851482008-04-15T15:26:00.000+05:302008-04-15T15:26:00.000+05:30I am not sure whether it is a trivial detail. I ne...I am not sure whether it is a trivial detail. I never studied 'Probability and Statistics' and recently started reading a text book. One of the first exercises was Monty Hall problem and it took a day to covince myself that one should switch doors. The discussion at <BR/>http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/07/monty-hall-meets-cognitive-dissonance/<BR/>shows that I am not the only one who has difficulties. May be it depends on how early one gets in to these things.gaddeswaruphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16509075029154476375noreply@blogger.com