On Sat, 16 Jun 2001 23:05:52 GMT, "W. D. Allen Sr."
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It's been years since I was in school so I do not remember if I have the
> following statement correct.
>
> Pascal said that if we know absolutely nothing
> about the probability of occurrence of an event
> then our best estimate for the probability of
> occurrence of that event is one half.
>
> Do I have it correctly? Any guidance on a source reference would be greatly
> appreciated!
I did a little bit of Web searching and could not find that.
Here is an essay about Bayes, which (dis)credits him and his
contemporaries as assuming something like that, years before Laplace.
I found it with a google search on
<"know absolutely nothing" probability> .
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~wstanners/bayes.htm
--
Rich Ulrich, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html
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