Detective Stories and Bayesian Analysis 2
jairob writes "A paper just posted in the arXiv reviews the maxims used by three early modern fictional detectives (PDF): Monsieur Lecoq, C. Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes. It finds similarities between these maxims and Bayesian thought. Poe's Dupin uses ideas very similar to Bayesian game theory. Sherlock Holmes' statements also show thought patterns justifiable in Bayesian terms. The author is an emeritus professor of statistics at Carnegie Mellon University."
Pure Awesome (Score:1)
Not that surprising (Score:1)
I haven't looked at the paper yet, but this isn't all that surprising. From WP: Bayesian probability is the name given to several related interpretations of probability, which have in common the notion of probability as something like a partial belief, rather than a frequency. [wikipedia.org]
It would be rather morbid, in my opinion, for detectives in murder mysteries to use the frequency probability interpretation as opposed to the Bayesian interpretation.