The Restoration has begun! Participate by buying Uncertainty: The Soul of Modeling, Probability & Statistics. Money spent wisely
I do not say revolution, but Restoration. It is past time to return our understanding of uncertainty to the Old Ways. The revolution in probability, as all revolutions do, spread discord, error, and confusion.
People actually believed, and were encouraged to believe, probability was real, that it had being, that probability was decision and decision probability, that probability-as-decision told cause, that probability was causal, that no probability could be known until the end of time, that probability was always a number, that probability was whatever you wanted it to be!
Horrible, horrible. No, it is not some cruel April Fool’s joke, as you might suspect. It was all too real.
That’s revolution for you. Lost was the simple, even trivial, truth that probability is only the expression of uncertainty given whatever assumptions one might care to make.
A man asks, “Given I know X, what is the probability of Y?”
After the revolution, the answer was, “We can’t or won’t tell you. Instead, here are some facts about mathematical creations that have nothing to do with your question. Feel free to think that they are the answer to your question, though.”
Cruel answer!
The restorationist answers the question properly.
Now how and why all this is so is explicated and proven (as in proven) in Uncertainty. Get your copy today, before Springer runs out of paper.
Does Dr. Judith Curry have a copy? She’s very big on uncertainty. Even calls it a monster. Which the book is not, of course, even if it lacks witty cartoons and contains a fair amount of notation.