Weighing Out the Odds
Presbyterian minister, Thomas Bayes, discovered a theorem that would revolutionize how people think when it comes to making decisions. The New York Times article, “The Mathematics of Changing Your Mind,” written by John Paulos discusses how statistics can be applied to more than just math but to every aspect of life. Throughout the article Paulos addresses the history of Bayes’ Therom. Surprisingly, Bayes’ friend Richard Price developed the ideas for the theorem but he is not given as much credit. Paulos further explained Bayes’ Theorem, as an assessment of the strength or weakness of a given hypothesis or statement. This can be translated in the real world which we have seen through this section of the course.
In lecture Professor Kleinberg used Bayes’ Theorem to determine the probability that an urn this filled with a majority of blue marbles given that one person pulled out a blue marble. We also used Bayes’ Theorem in homework which brought this theorem into reality. The example was the probability that a friend’s cell phone is off given some previous events. Although, Bayes’ Theorem is used mostly in a mathematical content it can also cross over into everyday real world problems.
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Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/books/review