This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American I’m not sure when I first heard of Bayes’ ...

Bayes' theorem, also called Bayes' rule or Bayesian theorem, is a mathematical formula used to determine the conditional probability of events. The theorem uses the power of statistics and probability ...

It’s estimated that human adults make about 35,000 decisions a day — the percentage of good decisions depends on the adult. These choices can be as banal as deciding to roll or crumple toilet paper or ...

Having a strong opinion about an issue can make it hard to take in new information about it, or to consider other options when they’re presented. Thankfully, there’s an old rule that can help us avoid ...

Bayesian inference is attractive due to its internal coherence and for often having good frequentisi properties. However, eliciting an honest prior may be difficult, and common practice is to take an ...

Given a few assumptions, the probability of a conjunction is raised, and the probability of its negation is lowered, by conditionalising upon one of the conjuncts. This simple result appears to bring ...

You're sitting in the doctor's office waiting for the result of a test. The test will tell you whether you have a disease you really don't want to have. As you wait, it seems as if the whole world is ...