Probability And The Art Of Judgment

Spanning a period of 35 years, this collection of essays includes some of the classic works of one of the most distinquished and influential philosophers working in the field of decision theory and the theory of knowledge.

Richard Jeffrey is beyond dispute one of the most distinguished and influential philosophers working in the field of decision theory and the theory of knowledge. His work is distinctive in showing the interplay of epistemological concerns with probability and utility theory. Not only has he made use of standard probabilistic and decision theoretic tools to clarify concepts of evidential support and informed choice, he has also proposed significant modifications of the standard Bayesian position in order that it provide a better fit with actual human experience. Probability logic is viewed not as a source of judgment but as a framework for explaining the implications of probabilistic judgments and their mutual compatability This collection of essays spans a period of some 35 years and includes what have become some of the classic works in the literature. There is also one completely new piece, while in many instances Jeffrey includes afterthoughts on the older essays.

This dissertation argues that for many purposes, it is often useful to regard probability as objective; and, furthermore, that we can do so without any metaphysically heavyweight commitments. Those claims will be defended within three broad domains: quantum mechanics, classical statistical mechanics, and macroscopic chance events such as coin tosses. It will be explored how taking objective probability as a function of two arguments (i.e., taking it as primitively conditional) contributes to its overall usefulness. Finally, it will be discussed how objective probability can guide our actual degrees of belief. A pluralist picture will be presented in which many variants of Lewis's Principal Principle are all of some use, each with their merits and demerits.

Thirty-five chapters describe various judgmental heuristics and the biases they produce, not only in laboratory experiments, but in important social, medical, and political situations as well. Most review multiple studies or entire subareas rather than describing single experimental studies.

This book is about elicitation: the facilitation of the quantitative expression of subjective judgement about matters of fact, interacting with subject experts, or about matters of value, interacting with decision makers or stakeholders. It offers an integrated presentation of procedures and processes that allow analysts and experts to think clearly about numbers, particularly the inputs for decision support systems and models. This presentation encompasses research originating in the communities of structured probability elicitation/calibration and multi-criteria decision analysis, often unaware of each other’s developments. Chapters 2 through 9 focus on processes to elicit uncertainty from experts, including the Classical Method for aggregating judgements from multiple experts concerning probability distributions; the issue of validation in the Classical Method; the Sheffield elicitation framework; the IDEA protocol; approaches following the Bayesian perspective; the main elements of structured expert processes for dependence elicitation; and how mathematical methods can incorporate correlations between experts. Chapters 10 through 14 focus on processes to elicit preferences from stakeholders or decision makers, including two chapters on problems under uncertainty (utility functions), and three chapters that address elicitation of preferences independently of, or in absence of, any uncertainty elicitation (value functions and ELECTRE). Two chapters then focus on cross-cutting issues for elicitation of uncertainties and elicitation of preferences: biases and selection of experts. Finally, the last group of chapters illustrates how some of the presented approaches are applied in practice, including a food security case in the UK; expert elicitation in health care decision making; an expert judgement based method to elicit nuclear threat risks in US ports; risk assessment in a pulp and paper manufacturer in the Nordic countries; and elicitation of preferences for crop planning in a Greek region.

Offering accessible and nuanced coverage, Richard W. Hamming discusses theories of probability with unique clarity and depth. Topics covered include the basic philosophical assumptions, the nature of stochastic methods, and Shannon entropy. One of the best introductions to the topic, The Art of Probability is filled with unique insights and tricks worth knowing.

This work examines issues such as medical diagnosis, weather forecasting, labour negotiations, risk, public policy, business strategy, eyewitnesses, and jury decisions. This is a revision of Arkes and Hammond's 1986 collection of papers on judgment and decision-making. Updated and extended, the focus of this volume is interdisciplinary and applied.

Since its original publication, Expert Political Judgment by New York Times bestselling author Philip Tetlock has established itself as a contemporary classic in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. Tetlock first discusses arguments about whether the world is too complex for people to find the tools to understand political phenomena, let alone predict the future. He evaluates predictions from experts in different fields, comparing them to predictions by well-informed laity or those based on simple extrapolation from current trends. He goes on to analyze which styles of thinking are more successful in forecasting. Classifying thinking styles using Isaiah Berlin's prototypes of the fox and the hedgehog, Tetlock contends that the fox--the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of traditions, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events--is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems. He notes a perversely inverse relationship between the best scientific indicators of good judgement and the qualities that the media most prizes in pundits--the single-minded determination required to prevail in ideological combat. Clearly written and impeccably researched, the book fills a huge void in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. It will appeal across many academic disciplines as well as to corporations seeking to develop standards for judging expert decision-making. Now with a new preface in which Tetlock discusses the latest research in the field, the book explores what constitutes good judgment in predicting future events and looks at why experts are often wrong in their forecasts.