Book description
Praise for the First Edition
"...a reference for everyone who is interested in knowing and handling uncertainty."
—Journal of Applied Statistics
The critically acclaimed First Edition of Understanding Uncertainty provided a study of uncertainty addressed to scholars in all fields, showing that uncertainty could be measured by probability, and that probability obeyed three basic rules that enabled uncertainty to be handled sensibly in everyday life. These ideas were extended to embrace the scientific method and to show how decisions, containing an uncertain element, could be rationally made.
Featuring new material, the Revised Edition remains the go-to guide for uncertainty and decision making, providing further applications at an accessible level including:
A critical study of transitivity, a basic concept in probability
A discussion of how the failure of the financial sector to use the proper approach to uncertainty may have contributed to the recent recession
A consideration of betting, showing that a bookmaker's odds are not expressions of probability
Applications of the book's thesis to statistics
A demonstration that some techniques currently popular in statistics, like significance tests, may be unsound, even seriously misleading, because they violate the rules of probability
Understanding Uncertainty, Revised Edition is ideal for students studying probability or statistics and for anyone interested in one of the most fascinating and vibrant fields of study in contemporary science and mathematics.
Table of contents
- Cover
- Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Preface
- Prologue
- Chapter 1: Uncertainty
- Chapter 2: Stylistic Questions
- Chapter 3: Probability
- Chapter 4: Two Events
- Chapter 5: The Rules of Probability
- Chapter 6: Bayes Rule
- Chapter 7: Measuring Uncertainty
- Chapter 8: Three Events
-
Chapter 9: Variation
- 9.1 Variation and Uncertainty
- 9.2 Binomial Distribution
- 9.3 Expectation
- 9.4 Poisson Distribution
- 9.5 Spread
- 9.6 Variability as an Experimental Tool
- 9.7 Probability and Chance
- 9.8 Pictorial Representation
- 9.9 Probability Densities
- 9.10 The Normal Distribution
- 9.11 Variation as a Natural Phenomenon
- 9.12 Ellsberg's Paradox
-
Chapter 10: Decision Analysis
- 10.1 Beliefs and Actions
- 10.2 Comparison of Consequences
- 10.3 Medical Example
- 10.4 Maximization of Expected Utility
- 10.5 More on Utility
- 10.6 Some Complications
- 10.7 Reason and Emotion
- 10.8 Numeracy
- 10.9 Expected Utility
- 10.10 Decision Trees
- 10.11 The Art and Science of Decision Analysis
- 10.12 Further Complications
- 10.13 Combination of Features
- 10.14 Legal Applications
- Chapter 11: Science
- Chapter 12: Examples
- Chapter 13: Probability Assessment
- Chapter 14: Statistics
- Epilogue
- Subject Index
- Index of Examples
- Index of Notations
Product information
- Title: Understanding Uncertainty, Revised Edition
- Author(s):
- Release date: December 2013
- Publisher(s): Wiley
- ISBN: 9781118650127
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