False expectations

Philosophy of Science 51 (1):128-136 (1984)
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Abstract

Common probabilistic fallacies and putative paradoxes are surveyed, including those arising from distribution repartitioning, from the reordering of expectation series, and from misconceptions regarding expected and almost certain gains in games of chance. Conditions are given for such games to be well-posed. By way of example, Bernoulli's "Petersburg Paradox" and Hacking's "Strange Expectations" are discussed and the latter are resolved. Feller's generalized "fair price, in the classical sense" is critically reviewed

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Citations of this work

Difference Minimizing Theory.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2019 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6.

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References found in this work

The Well-Posed Problem.Edwin T. Jaynes - 1973 - Foundations of Physics 3 (4):477-493.
The fallacy of intrinsic distributions.Amos Nathan - 1984 - Philosophy of Science 51 (4):677-684.
Strange expectations.Ian Hacking - 1980 - Philosophy of Science 47 (4):562-567.

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