Coincidences and How to Reason About Them

摘要: Suppose that several observations “coincide,” meaning they are similar in some interesting respect. Is this coinciding a mere coincidence, or does it derive from common cause? Those who reason about kind of question—whether embrace the first answer second—often deploy mode inference I call probabilistic modus tollens. In chapter criticize tollens and consider likelihood Bayesian frameworks for reasoning coincidences. also perspective offered by model selection theory (including Akaike information criterion), argue often provides important insights.