Philosophies, Puzzles, and Paradoxes: A Statistician's Search for the TruthYudiPawitan and YoungjoLeeChapman & Hall/CRC, 2024, xiv + 351 pages, £18.39/$23.96 paperback, £104/$136 hardback, £17.24/$22.46 eBook ISBN: 9781032377391 paperback; 9781032377407 hardback; 9781003341659 ebook
Year: 2024
Type: book-review
Abstract: Readership: Statistics graduate and advanced undergraduate students, practitioners, philosophers of science, and general readers intrigued by puzzles and paradoxes.A comment in the preface gives a fair indication of the character of this book: Our book is an eclectic, some might even say idiosyncratic, selection of topics that reflect our interests.Perhaps, inevitably, this review will have some of that same character in the points chosen to highlight.The book is divided into four parts.Part I (Chapters 1-4) treats 'How Do We Know Whether What We Believe Is True'; Part II (5-9) treats 'Probability and Inverse-Probability Inference'.Inverse probability is what is now called Bayesian inference; Part III (10-13) treats 'Likelihood and Likelihood-Based Inference'; and Part IV (14-19) treats 'Puzzles and Paradoxes' where, in a number of instances, the authors take up paradoxes that have been discussed earlier in the text again.A list that appears prior to the introduction names 30 paradoxes or paradox variations.Chapter 1 begins with a quotation from Edmond Burke (1729-1797): Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.Rationalism (as espoused by Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, and Hegel) is contrasted with empiricism (Aristotle, Locke and Hume), and the logical positivism of the Vienna circle.The distinctions are, the authors acknowledge, in large part a matter of emphasis.Chapter 2 moves, with the same attention to the historical background, to contrast deduction with induction, pointing out their 486
Source: International Statistical Review
DOI: 10.1111/insr.12601
Author: John Maindonald
Language: English
Subfield: Statistics and Probability
Field: Mathematics
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4403200288