Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id VAA02039 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 12 May 2000 21:38:26 +0100 Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 10:06:01 -0700 From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net> Subject: Re: Fwd: Did language drive society or vice versa? To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-id: <391C39F9.1C8D35F1@pacbell.net> Organization: Saybrook Graduate School X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en]C-PBI-NC404 (Win95; I) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Accept-Language: ja,en References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31CEB184@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Dear Vincent,
> Second, it's widely understood that human perceptions of probability, on the
> other hand, is extremely poor.
Actually, it seems that, as so often happens with psychological
experiments, the results are sensitive to wording. Gerd
Gigerenzer, in "Ecological Intelligence: An Adaptation for
Frequencies," in "The Evolution of Mind," edited by Cummins and
Allen (Oxford University Press, 1998), has shown that many of the
findings about how poorly humans handle probabilities do not hold
when they are presented as natural frequencies rather than as
percentages or fractions. E. g., 7 out of 10, 3 out of 1,000.
(Yes, 17% and 17 out of 100 are almost identical. But it seems to
matter for most people.)
IOW, most of people's difficulty with probability is not
conceptual as much as mathematical (I don't do fractions).
Best,
Bill
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