Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Classical probabilities, 1660–1840
- 2 Statistical probabilities, 1820–1900
- 3 The inference experts
- 4 Chance and life: controversies in modern biology
- 5 The probabilistic revolution in physics
- 6 Statistics of the mind
- 7 Numbers rule the world
- 8 The implications of chance
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
6 - Statistics of the mind
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2013
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Classical probabilities, 1660–1840
- 2 Statistical probabilities, 1820–1900
- 3 The inference experts
- 4 Chance and life: controversies in modern biology
- 5 The probabilistic revolution in physics
- 6 Statistics of the mind
- 7 Numbers rule the world
- 8 The implications of chance
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
[Statisticians] have already overrun every branch of science with a rapidity of conquest rivalled only by Attila, Mohammed, and the Colorado beetle.
Maurice Kendall (1942)INTRODUCTION
Probabilistic and statistical ideas have transformed experimental psychology not once but twice in the past fifty years: first at the level of method, and then at the level of theory. The two transformations are in fact intimately connected, and in a way perhaps peculiar to psychology. Because psychologists observe and theorize about their subjects just as their subjects observe and theorize about the world, the methods of the psychologists are prone to become models for the mental processes they study. Once psychologists came to view statistics as an indispensable method, it was not long before they began to conceive of the mind itself as an intuitive statistician.
Around 1960, our understanding of cognitive processes such as perception and thinking was radically transformed by a new metaphor: the mind as statistician. Questions such as how does the mind discriminate between two sounds, recognize an object as a person, attribute a cause to an event, or solve a problem, were approached from this new point of view. Brain functions are today described in terms of calculating probabilities and likelihood ratios, taking random samples, setting a decision criterion and estimating prior probabilities. This metaphor emerged at about the same time as another, similarly powerful one: the mind as computer.
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- Information
- The Empire of ChanceHow Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life, pp. 203 - 234Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989
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