Quotes About Probability

simultaneously we need to get continual feedback about how our clinical evaluation and interventions are going and be open to letting go of considered specifics, of moving back from the peaks of activation and plateaus of probability into the plane of possibility. Such feedback is a key element of effective psychotherapy of all sorts (see

prefrontally mediated, in which we attribute these shifts to what we've seen in the other person. Naturally, such a complex pathway can be bogged down by rigid valenced plateaus of probability, which skew accurate interpretations of the meaning of sensations.

open possibility (within the plane) to increased probability (in the plateau) to specific actuality (at the peak). As

To be useful, your beliefs should be constrained by the logic of probability.

We are far too willing to reject the belief that much of what we see in life is random.

How do people make the judgments and how do they assign decision weights? We start from two simple answers, then qualify them. Here are the oversimplified answers: People overestimate the probabilities of unlikely events. People overweight unlikely events in their decisions.

Amos and I introduced the idea of a conjunction fallacy, which people commit when they judge a conjunction of two events (here, bank teller and feminist) to be more probable than one of the events (bank teller) in a direct comparison.

There's a lot of randomness in the decisions that people make.

When you pay attention to a threat, you worry—and the decision weights reflect how much you worry. Because of the possibility effect, the worry is not proportional to the probability of the threat. Reducing or mitigating the risk is not adequate; to eliminate the worry the probability must be brought down to zero.

Researchers who pick too small a sample leave themselves at the mercy of sampling luck.

Fate, bad luck, probability—any of those seemed like a welcome respite from a dismal diagnosis. Now when her computer crashed or a pipe burst in the kitchen, she'd say, It's just one of those things. The phrase made her smile. It could work both ways, she decided. How many times do good things inexplicably come our way too?

Hold'em — like life itself — has its defining moment. It's the flop. When you see the flop, you're looking at 71 percent of your hand, and the cost is only a single round of betting.

Don't you generate theories, based on probability, and then eliminate them as facts come in? Isn't that how you find killers?" "Very true. But we also have to consider emotions. How we feel about things influences how we see them.

What if we did get so lucky that we're due for something terrible?

of the twenty children here today, ten will be dead in a few years. I don't know which group Kate will be in.

Anything is possible," I said. "But most things are unlikely.

Anything is possible but most things are unlikely.

Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance.

There is no such thing as no chance.

The worst is not always certain but it's very likely.

If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the 'Iliad.'

In no other branch of mathematics is it so easy for experts to blunder as in probability theory.

In science, the kind of evidence matters; all unlikelihoods are not created equal.

I'm really lucky I'm still around. Everybody expected me to die next... But it was always someone else instead of me.