Willful Ignorance : The Mismeasure of Uncertainty.

Intro -- WILLFUL IGNORANCE -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- CHAPTER 1 THE OPPOSITE OF CERTAINTY -- TWO DEAD ENDS -- ANALYTICAL ENGINES -- WHAT IS PROBABILITY? -- UNCERTAINTY -- WILLFUL IGNORANCE -- TOWARD A NEW SCIENCE -- CHAPTER 2 A QUIET REVOLUTION -- THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE -- INVENTING PROBABILITY -- STATISTICS -- THE TAMING OF CHANCE -- THE IGNORANCE FALLACY -- THE DILEMMA OF SCIENCE -- CHAPTER 3 A MATTER OF CHANCE -- ORIGINS -- Probability -- Risky Business -- Games, Odds, and Gambling -- THE FAMOUS CORRESPONDENCE -- Breaking the Symmetry Barrier -- The Interrupted Game -- WHAT DID NOT HAPPEN NEXT -- AGAINST THE ODDS -- A Fateful Journey -- Reasoning in Games of Chance -- CHAPTER 4 HARDLY TOUCHED UPON -- THE MATHEMATICS OF CHANCE -- Juan Caramuel -- Joseph Sauveur -- Jacob Bernoulli -- Thomas Strode -- Two Scottish Refugees: John Arbuthnot and David Gregory -- Isaac Newton -- EMPIRICAL FREQUENCIES -- John Graunt -- William Petty -- Three Dutch Masters: Huygens, Hudde, and De Witt -- Jacob Bernoulli -- Edmond Halley -- A QUANTUM OF CERTAINTY -- Why not Huygens or Leibniz? -- What about Probabilism? -- Bernoulli's Meditations -- Across the Channel -- CHAPTER 5 A MATHEMATICIAN OF BASEL -- PUBLICATION AT LAST -- THE ART OF CONJECTURING -- Part One: The Annotated Huygens -- Part Two: Permutations and Combinations -- Part Three: Games of Chance -- Part Four: Civil, Moral, and Economic Matters -- A TRAGIC ENDING -- CHAPTER 6 A DEFECT OF CHARACTER -- MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY -- An Itinerant Teacher -- Turning Point -- Expanding His Empire -- Defending His Empire -- A Mixed Legacy -- A FRACTION OF CHANCES -- De Mensura Sortis -- De Moivre's Epiphany -- CHAPTER 7 CLASSICAL PROBABILITY -- REVOLUTIONARY REVERENDS -- The Reverend Thomas Bayes -- The Reverend Richard Price -- The Famous Essay -- Philosophical Significance.

FROM CHANCES TO PROBABILITY -- The French Newton -- Laplace's Philosophy of Probability -- The Probability of Causes -- Insufficient Reason -- A Coincidence? -- CHAPTER 8 BABEL -- THE GREAT UNRAVELING -- PROBABILITY AS A RELATIVE FREQUENCY -- The Meaning of Randomness -- The Reference Class Problem -- The Problem of the Single Case -- PROBABILITY AS A LOGICAL RELATIONSHIP -- Keynesian Probability -- PROBABILITY AS A SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT -- Another Cambridge Prodigy -- Subjectivity Italian Style -- Subjectivity and Statistics -- PROBABILITY AS A PROPENSITY -- An Unorthodox Thinker -- A World of Propensities -- CHAPTER 9 PROBABILITY AND REALITY -- THE RAZOR'S EDGE -- WHAT FISHER KNEW -- WHAT REFERENCE CLASS? -- The Monty Hall Problem -- A POSTULATE OF IGNORANCE -- Conditional Probabilities -- Predicting Unique Events -- Inside Information -- The Two Envelope Problem -- LAPLACE'S ERROR -- CHAPTER 10 THE DECISION FACTORY -- BEYOND MORAL CERTAINTY -- Something Brewing -- A Tale of Two Students -- Contriving Ignorance -- Statistical Significance -- DECISIONS, DECISIONS -- An Odd Couple -- From Knowledge to Decisions -- Rage Against the Machine -- The Bayesian Revival -- MACHINE-MADE KNOWLEDGE -- CHAPTER 11 THE LOTTERY IN SCIENCE -- SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS -- Early Childhood Education -- Aspirin for Prevention -- FOOLED BY CAUSALITY -- Heuristics and Biases -- Are We Really So Dumb? -- STATISTICS FOR HUMANS: BIAS OR AMBIGUITY? -- The Representativeness Fallacy -- The Conjunction Fallacy -- The Allure of Causality -- REGRESSION TOWARD THE MEAN -- Explaining Regression Effects -- Predictions for Individuals -- The Regression of Science -- CHAPTER 12 TRUST, BUT VERIFY -- A NEW PROBLEM -- TRUST,… -- … BUT VERIFY -- THE FUTURE -- MINDFUL IGNORANCE -- APPENDIX: THE PASCAL-FERMAT CORRESPONDENCE OF 1654 -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.