We live in a world where a lot of things seem to happen by pure chance, from winning the Lotto to losing your car keys. But the truth is, the likelihood of many everyday things happening is heavily ...

Chris Wiggins, an associate professor of applied mathematics at Columbia University, offers this explanation. A patient goes to see a doctor. The doctor performs a test with 99 percent ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American I’m not sure when I first heard of Bayes’ ...

Observing, gathering knowledge and making predictions are the foundations of the scientific process. The accuracy of our predictions depends on the quality of our present knowledge and accuracy of our ...