New research looks at how language is used to convey information in context, something which is, according to its abstract “one of the most astonishing features of human language”. Apparently there have been “many” theories providing “informal accounts of communicative inference” but few have succeeded in making “precise, quantitative predictions about pragmatic reasoning”.
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- $60\%$ of students who study Chinese are artistic and love poetry.
- $20\%$ of students who study Business are artistic and love poetry, and
- Only about $1\%$ of students study Chinese, whereas about $15\%$ of students study Business.
The life and times of Paul the Psychic Octopus
You may be aware of plans for the movie ‘The life and times of Paul the Psychic Octopus’ (starring Bayes’ Theorem!). A tweet from David Spiegelhalter, who appears in the trailer, and a blog post from the Denver/Boulder A.V. Club indicates the film is ready or nearly ready to go and will appear in June and July at Sheffield Doc/Fest, the Edinburgh International Film Festival and at a screening on July 1 in Munich, Germany, hours before the Euro Cup final match.
A student is artistic and loves poetry. Is it more likely she’s studying Chinese or Business?
Let’s suppose that:
Thus, out of every $1000$ students, there are $10$ studying Chinese, of whom $6$ are artistic and love poetry, and also there are $150$ studying Business, of whom $30$ are artistic and love poetry.
So if a student is artistic and loves poetry, it’s $5$ times more likely she’s studying Business than Chinese.
So much for preconceptions (and “correlation”).