Re: Probability Of an Unknown Event
The only time I can think of this being meaningful is in determining what size sample to draw. If we don't have any prior information about what the proportion of events in a population have a particular characteristic (the probability of a characteristic), then we assume the worse-case (widest variance) of 50%. W. D. Allen Sr. 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! Thanks, WDA [EMAIL PROTECTED] end = Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =
Re: Probability Of an Unknown Event
Thanks Robert! WDA end - Original Message - From: Robert J. MacG. Dawson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: W. D. Allen Sr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2001 6:35 PM Subject: Re: Probability Of an Unknown Event W. D. Allen Sr. 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. [snipped] = Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =
Re: Probability Of an Unknown Event
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 = Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =
Re: Probability Of an Unknown Event
The problem comes because there is often no unique way of defining events. It is hard to think of a real example where we literally know nothing. The equal probability answer is often just a cop-out for not thinking about what we do know. = Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =
