Re: Programming is the Engineering Discipline of the Science that is Mathematics

From: vc <boston103_at_hotmail.com>
Date: 10 Jun 2006 20:43:16 -0700
Message-ID: <1149997395.960687.55910_at_y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>


Keith H Duggar wrote:
> > vc wrote:
> [snip VI crap]
>
> In order to give vc a specific equation reference to stare
> at, I had to pull out my copy of
>
> "Probability Theory: The Logic of Science" by E. T. Jaynes
>
> Reminded of what an excellent book it is (even though sadly
> Jaynes died before completing it), I started reading the
> first few chapters again. I ran across this statement by
> Jaynes:
>
> "Aristotelian deductive logic is the limiting form of our
> rules for plausible reasoning, as the robot becomes more
> certain of its conclusions."
>

The informal statement above should be read metaphorically rather than literally. PT aint' no logic due to lack of truth functionality, and the 'reduction' to logic, which you've failed to prove by the way, is possible only in trivial and uninteresting cases.

> This is nearly an exact paraphrase of my original comment
> which vc vociferously and ignorantly attacked.
>Chapter 2 of
> the book also contains derivations nearly identical to those
> I have posted here that vc called "mindless playing with
> formulas". So at least I'm in good company, vc, you
> vociferous ignoramus.

What Jaynes did in his derivation of the sum/product rules has got nothing to do with your mindless playing with formulas. See the argument from authority in my previous messages.

>
> Bob Badour, you mentioned in this thread that you "feel
> cheated that [your] education failed to teach [you] enough
> useful statistics". I don't know how much time you have to
> study these days but I would like to recommend Jaynes' book
> and also for an introduction focusing on practical use:
>
> "Data Analysis: A Bayesian Tutorial" D. S. Sivia
>
> I think you will find that learning probability theory from
> the Cox perspective will radically improve and simplify your
> understanding of both statistics and probability theory. The
> same advice goes for anyone out there in a similar situation.
> Reading the first few chapters of both Sivia and Jaynes as
> well as Jaynes' appendix "Other Approaches To Probability
> Theory" makes for a great start.
>
> After reading those you will think "why the frak didn't they
> teach me this in school."
>
> -- Keith --
>
> PS. Let me also take this opportunity to correct a typo in
> my previous post before the VI has a mental orgasm.
>
> Keith H Duggar wrote:
> > No but you claimed "P(p1 and p2) is not equal P(p1)*P(p1)
> > in general" which is of course pointing to the possibility
> > of p1 and p2 being dependent which is of course equivalent
> > to a conditional statement P(p1|p2) = P(p1).
>
> that should have been P(p1|p2) != P(p1).

That's assuming that P(p1|p2) even makes sense. More general formulation of such independence is just P(p1 and p2) = P(p1)* P(p2). Received on Sun Jun 11 2006 - 05:43:16 CEST

Original text of this message