Cognition and Chance: The Psychology of Probabilistic Reasoning


Product Description
Lack of ability to think probabilistically makes one prone to a variety of irrational fears and vulnerable to scams designed to exploit probabilistic naiveté, impairs decision making under uncertainty, facilitates the misinterpretation of statistical information, and precludes critical evaluation of likelihood claims. Cognition and Chance presents an overview of the information needed to avoid such pitfalls and to assess and respond to probabilistic situations in a rational way. Dr. Nickerson investigates such questions as how good individuals are at thinking probabilistically and how consistent their reasoning under uncertainty is with principles of mathematical statistics and probability theory. He reviews evidence that has been produced in researchers' attempts to investigate these and similar types of questions. Seven conceptual chapters address such topics as probability, chance, randomness, coincidences, inverse probability, paradoxes, dilemmas, and statistics. The remaining five chapters focus on empirical studies of individuals' abilities and limitations as probabilistic thinkers. Topics include estimation and prediction, perception of covariation, choice under uncertainty, and people as intuitive probabilists.Cognition and Chance is intended to appeal to researchers and students in the areas of probability, statistics, psychology, business, economics, decision theory, and social dilemmas.
Cognition and Chance: The Psychology of Probabilistic Reasoning Review
Useful and interesting book for several reasons. Style is midway between popular science and scholars writing for other scholars. The initial chapters recount history and the basic frequentist/Bayesian/etc philosophies of probability. The later chapters describe what experiments by psychologists like Tversky have shown about the way people think about probability -- basically, that people are illogical in different but roughly predictable ways in different contexts. The book touches upon many different topics, and gives around 1000 references, so it's an invaluable resource for seeing the big picture of what scholars have thought about, and for leads into the research literature. Downside: description of research is (to my taste) often rather vague and the author's verbal discussion is rather bland -- as if written by a committee -- rather than crisp statements followed by critical analysis.Most of the consumer Reviews tell that the "Cognition and Chance: The Psychology of Probabilistic Reasoning" are high quality item. You can read each testimony from consumers to find out cons and pros from Cognition and Chance: The Psychology of Probabilistic Reasoning ...

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