You're sitting in the doctor's office waiting for the result of a test. The test will tell you whether you have a disease you really don't want to have. As you wait, it seems as if the whole world is ...

We live in a world where a lot of things seem to happen by pure chance, from winning the Lotto to losing your car keys. But the truth is, the likelihood of many everyday things happening is heavily ...

Inside probability theory, conditional probability is a way to calculate and measure the probability of some event happening if another event has already occurred. The Bayes’ Theorem is one way of ...

Bayes' theorem, also called Bayes' rule or Bayesian theorem, is a mathematical formula used to determine the conditional probability of events. The theorem uses the power of statistics and probability ...

Chris Wiggins, an associate professor of applied mathematics at Columbia University, offers this explanation. A patient goes to see a doctor. The doctor performs a test with 99 percent ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American I’m not sure when I first heard of Bayes’ ...

Over the years, many writers have implied that statistics can provide almost any result that is convenient at the time. Of course, honest practitioners use statistics in an attempt to quantify the ...

When two people with strong prior beliefs at opposite ends of the spectrum meet, there is absolutely no way either of them can influence the other. Now think about those prime time discussions on news ...

Inside probability theory, conditional probability is a way to calculate and measure the probability of some event happening if another event has already occurred. The Bayes’ Theorem is one way of ...

The stock market is an ever-changing place. In fact, it’s changing every second of every day as prices go up and down, and new factors impact the trajectory of the market. It’s important for investors ...