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I guess the probability theory and statistics is the field with most false beliefs. It's because human intuition doesn't really work, but everyone is trying to
by dandanua 5y ago
I guess the probability theory and statistics is the field with most false beliefs. It's because human intuition doesn't really work, but everyone is trying to use it anyway.
For example, the answers mention the belief that if 3 distributions are pairwise independent then they're jointly independent. Another false belief is that if 2 distributions are independent then they are conditionally independent. Also, people might think that you can pick a real number from R uniformly.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago> people might think that you can pick a real number from R uniformly This one seems to stand out though - is there a specific "non-math" situation where this is going to cause problems ?
- dandanua 5y agoI can't imagine a reasonable non-math context :)
- pfortuny 5y agoAny unspecified conceptual problem of the type “choose a number” has this issue.
- BlueTemplar 5y agoHow is "conceptual problem" different from "math-only context" ?
- coliveira 5y agoYes, people think they have some idea of what is random, when in fact the human mind is made to pickup on patterns. For example, people think that a random set of numbers is one where different numbers appear evenly distributed, which is just false.