2021/08/06 by Yudi Pawitan, Pawitan, Yudi
Health Professions · Social Sciences · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Jury Decision Making Processes #Legal processes and jurisprudence #Medical Malpractice and Liability Issues #Other Statistics (stat.OT)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2108.03971
openalex publication_date 2021/08/06 · openalex created_date 2022/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
I think we can agree that dealing with uncertainty is not easy. Probability\nis the main tool for dealing with uncertainty, and we know there are many\nprobability-related puzzles and paradoxes. Here I describe a rather\nidiosyncratic selection that highlights the problem of accepting uncertain\nstatements. Without going into a formal decision theory, there are simple\nintuitive rational bases for doing that, for instance based on high probability\nalone. The lottery paradox shows the logical problem of accepting uncertain\nstatements based on high probability. The DNA evidence story is an example of\nthe use probabilistic reasoning in court, where philosophical differences\nbetween the schools of inference -- the frequentist, Bayesian and likelihood\nschools -- lead to substantial differences in the quantification of evidence.\n