Related papers: How often does theory match experiment?
The frequency and magnitude of weather extreme events have increased significantly during the past few years in response to anthropogenic climate change. However, global statistical characteristics and underlying physical mechanisms are…
Catastrophes of all kinds can be roughly defined as short duration-large amplitude events following and followed by long periods of "ripening". Major earthquakes surely belong to the class of 'catastrophic' events. Because of the space-time…
The plausibility of uncommon events and miracles based on testimony of such an event has been much discussed. When analyzing the probabilities involved, it has mostly been assumed that the common events can be taken as data in the…
Consequences of the basic and most evident consistency requirement-that measured events cannot happen and not happen at the same time-are shortly reviewed. Particular emphasis is given to event forecast and event control. As a consequence,…
Prediction of events is the challenge in many different disciplines, from meteorology to finance; the more this task is difficult, the more a system is {\it complex}. Nevertheless, even according to this restricted definition, a general…
Linear models are foundational tools in statistics and ubiquitous across the applied sciences. However, conventional statistical inference -- such as $t$-tests and $F$-tests -- are only valid at fixed sample sizes, making them unsuitable…
Both in quantum theory and in general probabilistic theories, measurements with $n$ outcomes are modelled as $n$-tuples of \emph{effects} summing up to the unit effect. Why is this the case, and can this assumption be meaningfully relaxed?…
This article discusses the possibility of predicting human behavior in a mechanism. Such a mechanism will have certain properties, which are defined and discussed here. Here it is shown that, unfortunately, certain property combinations are…
How can we draw trustworthy scientific conclusions? One criterion is that a study can be replicated by independent teams. While replication is critically important, it is arguably insufficient. If a study is biased for some reason and other…
The true process that generated data cannot be determined when multiple explanations are possible. Prediction requires a model of the probability that a process, chosen randomly from the set of candidate explanations, generates some future…
The notion that there are many "universes" with different properties is one answer to the question of "why is the universe so hospitable to life?" This notion also naturally follows from current ideas in eternal inflation and string/M…
What science does, what science could do, and how to make science work? If we want to know the answers to these questions, we need to be able to uncover the mechanisms of science, going beyond metrics that are easily collectible and…
Theory of quantum measurements is often classified as decision theory. An event in decision theory corresponds to the measurement of an observable. This analogy looks clear for operationally testable simple events. However, the situation is…
Theoretical predictions of physical observables often involve extrapolations to regions that are poorly constrained by laboratory experiments and astrophysical observations. Without properly quantified theoretical errors, such model…
The problem of how mathematics and physics are related at a foundational level is of much interest. One approach is to work towards a coherent theory of physics and mathematics together. Here steps are taken in this direction by first…
We outline how modern likelihood theory, which provides essentially exact inferences in a variety of parametric statistical problems, may routinely be applied in practice. Although the likelihood procedures are based on analytical…
We introduce a hierarchical classification of theories that describe systems with fundamentally limited information content. This property is introduced in an operational way and gives rise to the existence of mutually complementary…
Scientific feasibility assessment asks whether a claim is consistent with established knowledge and whether experimental evidence could support or refute it. We frame feasibility assessment as a diagnostic reasoning task in which, given a…
Classical probability theory supports probability measures, assigning a fixed positive real value to each event, these measures are far from satisfactory in formulating real-life occurrences. The main innovation of this paper is the…
Evidently, physical experiments are practically reproducible even though the fully identical preparation of initial state wave functions is often far beyond experimental possibilities. It is thus natural to explore if and in which sense…