Related papers: The marginalization paradox does not imply inconsi…
In this paper we leverage on probability over Riemannian manifolds to rethink the interpretation of priors and posteriors in Bayesian inference. The main mindshift is to move away from the idea that "a prior distribution establishes a…
Since the diagonal lemma plays a key role in the proof of the main limitative theorems of logic, its proof could shed light on the very essence of these fundamental theorems. Yet the lemma is often characterized as one of those important…
Testing the equality of two proportions is a common procedure in science, especially in medicine and public health. In these domains it is crucial to be able to quantify evidence for the absence of a treatment effect. Bayesian hypothesis…
Modern physics is founded on two mainstays: mathematical modelling and empirical verification. These two assumptions are prerequisite for the objectivity of scientific discourse. Here we show, however, that they are contradictory, leading…
For half a century, authors have weakened the rule of necessitation in various more or less ad hoc ways in order to make inconsistent systems consistent. More recently, necessitation was weakened in a systematic way, not for the purpose of…
We show that the Bayesian star paradox, first proved mathematically by Steel and Matsen for a specific class of prior distributions, occurs in a wider context including less regular, possibly discontinuous, prior distributions.
The Bayesian approach to inverse problems provides a practical way to solve ill-posed problems by augmenting the observation model with prior information. Due to the measure-theoretic underpinnings, the approach has raised theoretical…
Paradoxes are interesting puzzles in philosophy and mathematics, and they could be even more fascinating, when turned into proofs and theorems. For example, Liar's paradox can be translated into a propositional tautology, and Barber's…
This paper explores the options available to the anti-realist to defend a Quinean empirical under-determination thesis using examples of dualities. I first explicate a version of the empirical under-determination thesis that can be brought…
A series of monte carlo studies were performed to compare the behavior of some alternative procedures for reasoning under uncertainty. The behavior of several Bayesian, linear model and default reasoning procedures were examined in the…
The role of probability appears unchallenged as the key measure of uncertainty, used among other things for practical induction in the empirical sciences. Yet, Popper was emphatic in his rejection of inductive probability and of the logical…
The derivation of the quantum retrodictive probability formula involves an error, an ambiguity. The end result is correct because this error appears twice, in such a way as to cancel itself. In addition, however, the usual expression for…
The missionary zeal of many Bayesians of old has been matched, in the other direction, by a view among some theoreticians that Bayesian methods are absurd-not merely misguided but obviously wrong in principle. We consider several examples,…
Full Bayesian posteriors are rarely analytically tractable, which is why real-world Bayesian inference heavily relies on approximate techniques. Approximations generally differ from the true posterior and require diagnostic tools to assess…
In this article, I will present a paradox whose purpose is to draw your attention to an important topic in finance, concerning the non-independence of the financial returns (non-ergodic hypothesis). In this paradox, we have two people…
Establishing that a set of population-splitting events occurred at the same time can be a potentially persuasive argument that a common process affected the populations. Oaks et al. (2013) assessed the ability of an approximate-Bayesian…
When dealing with Bayesian inference the choice of the prior often remains a debatable question. Empirical Bayes methods offer a data-driven solution to this problem by estimating the prior itself from an ensemble of data. In the…
In this paper we analyse some of the classical paradoxes in Social Choice Theory (namely, the Condorcet paradox, the discursive dilemma, the Ostrogorski paradox and the multiple election paradox) using a general framework for the study of…
After experimenting with a number of non-probabilistic methods for dealing with uncertainty many researchers reaffirm a preference for probability methods [1] [2], although this remains controversial. The importance of being able to form…
The formalization of First Passage schemes is revisited and the emerging of a conceptual contradiction is underlined. We then show why, despite such a contradiction, the numerical results are not explicitly affected. Through a different…