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Probability theory and perception of randomness: Bridging “ought” and “is”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Yanlong Sun  and
Hongbin Wang
Yanlong Sun
Affiliation:
School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030. [email protected]
Hongbin Wang
Affiliation:
School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030. [email protected] Department of Psychology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084China. [email protected]
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Abstract

We argue that approaches adhering to normative systems can be as fruitful as those by descriptive systems. In measuring people's perception of randomness, discrepancies between human behavior and normative models could have resulted from unknown properties of the models, and it does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that people are irrational or that the normative system has to be abandoned.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 34 , Issue 5 , October 2011 , pp. 271 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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