This volume provides a necessary, current and extensive analysis of probabilistic thinking from a number of mathematicians, mathematics educators, and psychologists. The work of 58 contributing authors, investigating probabilistic thinking across the globe, is encapsulated in 6 prefaces, 29 chapters and 6 commentaries. Ultimately, the four main perspectives presented in this volume (Mathematics and Philosophy, Psychology, Stochastics and Mathematics Education) are designed to represent probabilistic thinking in a greater context.
WILEY-INTERSCIENCE PAPERBACK SERIES The Wiley-Interscience Paperback Series consists of selected books that have been made more accessible to consumers in an effort to increase global appeal and general circulation. With these new unabridged softcover volumes, Wiley hopes to extend the lives of these works by making them available to future generations of statisticians, mathematicians, and scientists. From the Reviews of History of Probability and Statistics and Their Applications before 1750 "This is a marvelous book . . . Anyone with the slightest interest in the history of statistics, or in understanding how modern ideas have developed, will find this an invaluable resource." –Short Book Reviews of ISI
"This exceptional book provides valuable insights into the evolution of financial economics from the perspective of a major player." -- Robert Litzenberger, Hopkinson Professor Emeritus of Investment Banking, Univ. of Pennsylvania; and retired partner, Goldman Sachs A History of the Theory of Investments is about ideas -- where they come from, how they evolve, and why they are instrumental in preparing the future for new ideas. Author Mark Rubinstein writes history by rewriting history. In unearthing long-forgotten books and journals, he corrects past oversights to assign credit where credit is due and assembles a remarkable history that is unquestionable in its accuracy and unprecedented in its power. Exploring key turning points in the development of investment theory, through the critical prism of award-winning investment theory and asset pricing expert Mark Rubinstein, this groundbreaking resource follows the chronological development of investment theory over centuries, exploring the inner workings of great theoretical breakthroughs while pointing out contributions made by often unsung contributors to some of investment's most influential ideas and models.
This highly acclaimed text, now available in paperback, provides a thorough account of key concepts and theoretical results, with particular emphasis on viewing statistical inference as a special case of decision theory. Information-theoretic concepts play a central role in the development of the theory, which provides, in particular, a detailed discussion of the problem of specification of so-called prior ignorance . The work is written from the authors s committed Bayesian perspective, but an overview of non-Bayesian theories is also provided, and each chapter contains a wide-ranging critical re-examination of controversial issues. The level of mathematics used is such that most material is accessible to readers with knowledge of advanced calculus. In particular, no knowledge of abstract measure theory is assumed, and the emphasis throughout is on statistical concepts rather than rigorous mathematics. The book will be an ideal source for all students and researchers in statistics, mathematics, decision analysis, economic and business studies, and all branches of science and engineering, who wish to further their understanding of Bayesian statistics
The autonomy of individuals their view of the world in the past, had led to the problem that socially acceptable decisions could not be made in the absence of unanimity. This book addresses this shortcoming.
The Fundamental Issues Involved Why do we need a theory of uncertainty? It is a fact that almost all man's economic decisions are made under conditions of uncertainty, but this fact alone does not provide a strong enough argument for making the effort necessary to generalize ordinary preference theory designed for a world of perfect certainty. In accordance with Occam's Razor, the mathematician may well welcome a generalization of assumptions even if it does not promise more than a restatement of known results. The economist, however, will only be well disposed towards making the effort if he can expect to achieve new insights and interesting results, for he is interested in the techniques necessary for the generalization only as means to an end, not as ends in themselves. A stronger reason for developing a theory of uncertainty, therefore, seems to be the fact that there are kinds of economic activities to which the non-stochastic preference theory has no access or has access only through highly artificial constructions. Such activities include portfolio decisions of wealth holders, speculation, and insurance. These will be considered in detail in the last chapter of the book. The main purpose of this book, however, is not to apply a theory of uncertainty to concrete economic problems, the purpose rather is to formulate such a theory.
This book completes a landmark six-volume translation of the major writings of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), a philosopher and historian of culture who continues to have a significant influence on philosophy, hermeneutics, and the theory of the human sciences. These volumes make available to English readers texts that represent the full range of Dilthey's work. The works in this volume present Dilthey's most deeply held views about philosophy and how it can guide human practices. System of Ethics (1890) argues that Humean sympathy motivates us only externally and must be replaced with the internally motivated fellow-feeling of solidarity that respects others as ends in themselves. The Essence of Philosophy (1907) demonstrates how philosophy has developed from its traditional metaphysical role to the epistemological and encyclopedic functions that ground and order the natural and human sciences. The work also discloses an orientational function of philosophy that is explored further in "The Types of World-View and Their Development" (1911). Philosophical world-views are important in that they address the existential needs and riddles that grow out of life experience and are not solved by any of the sciences. In addition, the book features three other significant essays. "Present Day Culture and Philosophy" (1898) concerns the challenges to philosophy posed by contemporary culture. "Dream" (1903) is about the thinkers portrayed in Raphael's School of Athens and Dilthey's worries about them breaking up into three divergent groups. Finally, "The Problem of Religion" (1911) considers how religiosity can still inform lived experience in secular times.
The focus of this book is on how experts adapt to complexity, synthesize and interpret information in context, and transform or "fuse" disparate items of information into coherent knowledge. The chapters examine these processes across experts (e.g. global leaders, individuals in extreme environments, managers, police officers, pilots, commanders, doctors, inventors), across contexts (e.g. space and space analogs, corporate organizations, command and control, crisis and crowd management, air traffic control, the operating room, product development), and for both individual and team performance. Successful information integration is a key factor in the success of diverse endeavors, including team attempts to climb Mt. Everest, crowd control in the Middle East, and remote drilling operations. This volume is divided into four sections, each with a specific focus on an area of expert performance, resulting in a text that covers a wide range of useful information. These sections present well-researched discussions, such as: the management of complex situations in various fields and decision contexts; technological and training approaches to facilitate knowledge management by individual experts and expert teams; new or neglected perspectives in expert decision making; and the importance of ‘modeling’ expert performance through techniques and frameworks such as Cognitive Task Analysis, computational architectures based on the notion of causal belief mapping such as ‘Convince Me,’ or the data/frame model of sensemaking. The volume provides essential reading for researchers and practitioners of Naturalistic Decision Making and those who study Expertise; Organizational and Cognitive Psychologists; and researchers and students in Business and Engineering.
