Abstract
How is the force of different items of evidence to be combined? Modern probability theory and statistics can tell you how to combine evidence of the same kind, but there has been little study of how different kinds of evidence interact. Yet it is an old problem. Jacques Bernoulli (1654–1705) has a good discussion of it.1 One of his solutions was rejected by J.-H. Lambert (1728–1777)2. Their disagreement provides a good test case for any theory about the combination of evidence.
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References
See, for example, I. Todhunter, A History of the Mathematical Theory of Probability, London, 1865. and New York, 1949, p. 71. Todhunter supports Lambert’s objection, saying of Bernoulli that his ‘formula is inaccurate’.
Ars conjectandi, Pt. IV, Ch. iii, Sec. 7.
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© 1974 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland
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Hacking, I. (1974). Combined Evidence. In: Stenlund, S., Henschen-Dahlquist, AM., Lindahl, L., Nordenfelt, L., Odelstad, J. (eds) Logical Theory and Semantic Analysis. Synthese Library, vol 63. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2191-3_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2191-3_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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