Talk:Probability

Article Checklist for "Probability"

Workgroup category or categories	Economics Workgroup, Mathematics Workgroup, Philosophy Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Developing article: beyond a stub, but incomplete
Underlinked article?	Yes
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	--AlekStos 12:01, 26 March 2007 (CDT)

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Yes, Probability theory exists

But "probability" is an important idea all by itself. What is the probability of a traffic accident at 12th and Main streets in given weather, for example. College courses about how to calculate probability are widely taught. I'm trying to point out the article's title is "Probability" and that "Probability Theory" would be better presented later in the article, or as its own article. Terry E. Olsen 18:40, 1 May 2007 (CDT)

Comments

In the "Example of the Bayesian viewpoint" section, it needs to be mentioned that the die is to be thrown more than once and that one is willing to consider the possibility that it is an unfair die, i.e. that the result on one roll may not be statistically independent of the result on another roll. Is this really a valid representation of how Bayes viewed probability, or is it a later construct loosely based on Bayes' views?

Under "Objective probability" it says "If our (empirical) results seem improbable, we may decide to do experiments to re-measure the "propensities"." This sounds to me like the Bayesian viewpoint, not the objective viewpoint. I think that in the objective viewpoint, if you have decided what your propensities are and you get some results -- well, those are your results and that's that. If you're going to go re-measuring your propensities that suggests that you had a prior probability that the original measured propensities were wrong. --Catherine Woodgold 10:53, 6 May 2007 (CDT)