Related papers: On the Mathematics of the Jeffreys-Lindley Paradox
The way a rational agent changes her belief in certain propositions/hypotheses in the light of new evidence lies at the heart of Bayesian inference. The basic natural assumption, as summarized in van Fraassen's Reflection Principle…
The choice of priors may become an insoluble problem if priors and Bayes' rule are not seen and accepted in the framework of subjectivism. Therefore, the meaning and the role of subjectivity in science is considered and defended from the…
From the customary view the Michelson-Morley experiment is used to expose the failure of the aether theory. The key point in this experiment is the \emph{fringe shift} of the interference pattern. Regularly, the fringe shift calculations…
Cromwell's rule (also known as the zero priors paradox) refers to the constraint of classical probability theory that if one assigns a prior probability of 0 or 1 to a hypothesis, then the posterior has to be 0 or 1 as well (this is a…
Bayes' Theorem imposes inevitable limitations on the accuracy of screening tests by tying the test's predictive value to the disease prevalence. The aforementioned limitation is independent of the adequacy and make-up of the test and thus…
In certain applications involving the solution of a Bayesian inverse problem, it may not be possible or desirable to evaluate the full posterior, e.g. due to the high computational cost of doing so. This problem motivates the use of…
The St. Petersburg paradox is the oldest paradox in decision theory and has played a pivotal role in the introduction of increasing concave utility functions embodying risk aversion and decreasing marginal utility of gains. All attempts to…
Many macroscopic physical processes are known to occur in a time-directed way despite the apparent time-symmetry of the known fundamental laws. A popular explanation is to postulate an unimaginably atypical state for the early universe -- a…
In the standard formulation of the twin paradox an accelerated twin considers himself as at rest and his brother as moving. Hence, when formulating the twin paradox, one uses the general principle of relativity, i.e. that accelerated and…
Hardy's paradox is analysed within Feynman's formulation of quantum mechanics. A transition amplitude is represented as a sum over virtual paths which different intermediate measurements convert into different sets of real pathways.…
In the application of Bayesian methods to metrology, pre-data probabilities play a critical role in the estimation of the model uncertainty. Following the observation that distributions form Riemann's manifolds, methods of differential…
A nonparametric variant of the Kiefer--Weiss problem is proposed and investigated. In analogy to the classical Kiefer--Weiss problem, the objective is to minimize the maximum expected sample size of a sequential test. However, instead of…
The 120-year old so-called Painleve paradox involves the loss of determinism in models of planar rigid bodies in point contact with a rigid surface, subject to Coulomb-like dry friction. The phenomenon occurs due to coupling between normal…
Astrophysical paradoxes are the paradoxes of physics. The main motivation of a formulated paradox is clearly recognized in the scientific environment because the phenomenon of a paradox itself has become interesting. There is an explanation…
The Drinker Paradox is as follows. In every nonempty tavern, there is a person such that if that person is drinking, then everyone in the tavern is drinking. Formally, \[ \exists x \big(\varphi \rightarrow \forall y \varphi[x/y]\big) \ . \]…
This paper argues that, insofar as we doubt the bivalence of the Continuum Hypothesis or the truth of the Axiom of Choice, we should also doubt the consistency of third-order arithmetic, both the classical and intuitionistic versions.…
Fisher's fiducial argument is widely viewed as a failed version of Neyman's theory of confidence limits. But Fisher's goal -- Bayesian-like probabilistic uncertainty quantification without priors -- was more ambitious than Neyman's, and…
A fundamental class of inferential problems are those characterised by there having been a substantial degree of pre-data (or prior) belief that the value of a model parameter was equal or lay close to a specified value, which may, for…
If a quantum system is prepared and later post-selected in certain states, "paradoxical" predictions for intermediate measurements can be obtained. This is the case both when the intermediate measurement is strong, i.e. a projective…
Demonstrations of quantum entanglement which confirm the violation of Bell's inequality indicate that under certain conditions action at a distance is possible. This consequence seems to contradict the relativistic principle of causality,…