Abstract
DR. J. NEYMAN, in his review1 of Karl Pearson's “Grammar of Science”, which was republished on my suggestion, quotes a passage from my recent paper2 on the law of errors as “a remarkable illustration of the confusion of the perceptual and the conceptual spheres of thought”. The whole of my work on probability is based on the recognition of the distinction between description and inference, the neglect of which is responsible for much confusion in current statistical and physical theory. Inference, in my opinion, begins at an even earlier stage than Pearson states in the “Grammar”. In the passage quoted it should be clear that I am speaking wholly in the inferential sphere. An actual set of observations is necessarily discrete and cannot be described by any continuous law of error. But it may provide means of saying which of several continuous laws is the more probable on the data.
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References
NATURE, 142, 229 (1938).
Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., A, 237, 231–271 (1938).
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JEFFREYS, H. The Law of Error. Nature 142, 534 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142534a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142534a0
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