Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T19:05:44.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Inverse Probability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

R. A. Fisher
R. A. Fisher
Affiliation:
Gonville and Caius College; Statistical Dept., Rothamsted Experimental Station
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

I know only one case in mathematics of a doctrine which has been accepted and developed by the most eminent men of their time, and is now perhaps accepted by men now living, which at the same time has appeared to a succession of sound writers to be fundamentally false and devoid of foundation. Yet that is quite exactly the position in respect of inverse probability. Bayes, who seems to have first attempted to apply the notion of probability, not only to effects in relation to their causes but also to causes in relation to their effects, invented a theory, and evidently doubted its soundness, for he did not publish it during his life. It was posthumously published by Price, who seems to have felt no doubt of its soundness. It and its applications must have made great headway during the next 20 years, for Laplace takes for granted in a highly generalised form what Bayes tentatively wished to postulate in a special case.

Type
Research Article
Information
Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , October 1930 , pp. 528 - 535
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Philosophical Society 1930

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)