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Probability theory and perception of randomness: Bridging “ought” and “is”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Yanlong Sun
Affiliation:
School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030. Yanlong.Sun@uth.tmc.edu
Hongbin Wang
Affiliation:
School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030. Yanlong.Sun@uth.tmc.edu Department of Psychology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084China. Hongbin.Wang@uth.tmc.edu

Abstract

We argue that approaches adhering to normative systems can be as fruitful as those by descriptive systems. In measuring people's perception of randomness, discrepancies between human behavior and normative models could have resulted from unknown properties of the models, and it does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that people are irrational or that the normative system has to be abandoned.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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