
A Bayesian Take on Julian Assange - azazo
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/a-bayesian-take-on-julian-assange/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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jchonphoenix
This is just a pet peeve of mine: journalists who obviously didn't double
check the facts they speak of.

The psychological fallacy that the author speaks of is actually well studied
and known as the conjunction fallacy and is not really that related to
bayesian inference[1].

It is also notable that human decision making shows base rate neglect (not
considering conditional probabilities), but when things are presented in terms
of frequencies rather than strict probabilities, human decision making follows
a bayesian curve[2], thus showing that humans do in fact incorporate bayesian
learning and are in fact good at it contrary to what the journalist says.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy>

[2]A. Tversky & D. Kahneman: "The framing of decisions and the psychology of
choice", Science, 211, 453-458 (1981).

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nkurz
You have a very well formatted post with excellent footnotes, which makes me
inclined to trust it. Yet the author of the piece, Nate Silver, is widely
regarded as a professional statistician (with a solid degree in economics) and
likely has a strong understanding of these issues. I'm predisposed to trust
Silver over an unknown source from the internet because of my prior experience
with his writings and the respect which others accord him. Therefore, despite
the plausibility of your criticism, I still side with Silver.

p.s. My silly self-referential post aside, I think that neither my assessment
nor Silver's is an example of the conjunction fallacy.

