granpa
03-08-08, 12:58 PM
bayesian statistics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability#Probabilities_of_probabilitie s
if someone pulls out a coin and asks me 'head or tails', even though i know nothing about that particular coin (it might be a two headed coin), i fully expect that if i predict head or tails at random then i have a 50% chance of winning. this is the expectation not the probability that the coin will land one way or the other. i dont know the probability for that particular coin. this is how fuzzy logic works.
belief (as opposed to knowledge) is similar. in fact a bayesian probability is sometimes called 'degree of belief'.
the point being that it is possible to have a belief about something that you know almost nothing about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability#Probabilities_of_probabilitie s
if someone pulls out a coin and asks me 'head or tails', even though i know nothing about that particular coin (it might be a two headed coin), i fully expect that if i predict head or tails at random then i have a 50% chance of winning. this is the expectation not the probability that the coin will land one way or the other. i dont know the probability for that particular coin. this is how fuzzy logic works.
belief (as opposed to knowledge) is similar. in fact a bayesian probability is sometimes called 'degree of belief'.
the point being that it is possible to have a belief about something that you know almost nothing about.