We can do the bears as an example (eventually).

Podcasts are going downhill. I’m making some changes.

It’s just errata from the Cultural Cesspool, but does possess numbers that could be statistically crunched just to illustrate a statistical point, rather than a philosophical point about the absurdity of our PoPoMo world (which looks increasingly like the Dark Ages).

btw, speaking of statistical purposes, the podcasts are delightful. A real treat. Thank you.

An odd thing about that paper is the sampling method they used. Perhaps it was too expensive to count all vehicles.

The researchers did not test that particular hypothesis, but were impressed enough by the data to the extent that they attributed to bears a capacity for making max/min cost/benefit analyses and exhibiting of behaviors (by the bears) that would make marketeers at our newly formed Government Motors weep for joy.

Yosemite bears can, for instance, distinguish between minvans and SUV’s, stationwagons, and subcompacts, a feat my wife can’t do — and she had some formal schooling in her youth, something few bears can claim (with any honesty).

This is one of those cases where the data are or should be highly suspect, IMHO. There is a tendency in our trusting if not gullible species to believe what we are told to believe, if the teller is an authority figure of some kind (has a badge, or wears a white lab coat, or is rather tall, or is giving away free tickets for haircut and neck massage at the newly open barber franchise at the mall, or was accidently elected President, or is a Jewish mother, or otherwise gives off the aroma of authority, which can be purchased at the Sharper Image website).

Because people, being people, will act in strange ways that are as surprising to bears as they are to us, only more so.

I am aware of the psychologists’ investigations but for most of their questions and indeed experiments you might do better to consult a skillful stage magician who understands these things rather better and furthermore can ensure whatever outcome you please. Especially in front of educated, as they imagine themselves to be, audiences such as scientists and the like. Remember Oliver Lodge?

No my mind was turned another way.

It seems to me that we actually do have large scale records of how people view probabllity: but nobody has ever collated or analysed these. Partly that may be that they are commercially confidential, partly that they did not and were not designed to collect information in a suitable form, and so on.

Gambling and how people select their choices is an excellent example and whilst casinos etc. do monitor these patterns to detect what they call cheating they keep their records confidential.

The best hope would be the big UK bookmaking chains because they not only keep accurate records but also employ good statisticians part of whose job is to devise new complex bets which depend, to make profits, on the way people bet. That is if the punters laid their money randomly the bookmaker would make a loss.

Into that they calculate both the likely loss but also the difficulty of laying sufficient small bets to affect their profits, large ones are capped by maximum payout, and the level of significance which might suggest there was some kind of organised action against them.

Unfortunately I am persona non grata with them.

Kindest Regards

Bears have sensitive noses. They know a high sugar content car when they smell one. It surely wouldn’t take long for a bear that’s no smarter than average to learn which shaped car contained the goodies last time. They are fascinating creatures, anyway. I was pleased to read your comment.

Not that far in the lectures yet. “Fair” die and all that is coming soon.

You mean we haven’t gotten that far in your lectures yet? Or we, as humans, haven’t got that far yet?

I’m still trying to figure out how your “logical probability” approach will outperform a frequentist approach for a loaded die.

Or if you really want to have fun, how would you determine if a die is “fair”? How would this different from your experiments on Korean psychics?

Some smart bears, there. Naturally, the press reports simplify. I found the original article here.

For Yosemite bears, dinner arrives in a minivan

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091025/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_yosemite_bears_2

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. – What’s bigger than a picnic basket and even better than one in the eyes of black bears that live in Yosemite National Park? A study published this month in the Journal of Mammalogy says it’s minivans driven by families with children who leave behind a trail of spilled juice boxes, Cheerios and coolers carrying other snacks.

Park scientists have found that the bears tore up minivans more frequently than other types of vehicles. It found that minivans represented 29 percent of the 908 vehicles torn into by bears between 2001 and 2007, even though they made up just 7 percent of the cars that visited Yosemite.

The researchers investigated the relationship after noticing that bears seemed to target that particular vehicle type.

What’s the Bayesian likelihood of that?