Theory That Would Not Die

Product Description

Drawing on primary source material & interviews with statisticians & other scientists The Theory That Would Not Die" is the riveting account of how a seemingly simple theorem ignited one of the greatest scientific controversies of all time. Bayes rule appears to be a straightforward one-line theorem: by updating our initial beliefs with objective new information we get a new & enhanced belief. To its adherents it is an elegant statement about learning from experience. To its opponents it is subjectivity run amok. In the first-ever account of Bayes rule for general readers Sharon Bertsch Mc Grayne explores this controversial theorem & the human obsessions surrounding it. She traces its discovery by an amateur mathematician in the 1740s through its development into roughly its modern form by French scientist Pierre Simon Laplace. She reveals why respected statisticians rendered it professionally taboo for 150 years
- at the same time that practitioners relied on it to solve crises involving great uncertainty & scanty information even breaking Germanys Enigma code during World War II & explains how the advent of off-the-shelf computer technology in the 1980s proved to be a game-changer. Today Bayes rule is used everywhere from DNA decoding to Homeland Security. " The Theory That Would Not Die" is a vivid account of the generations-long dispute over one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of applied mathematics & statistics."