Abstract
DR. STERNE'S statement concerning me, that: “He argues that neither for his problem nor for Eddington's can there be any consistent, correct solution”, is not quite accurate. I did not dispute that a combination of the data was possible which would allow of a unique result, but I claimed that such a combination did not yield probability according to any significant meaning of the word. If the square of a man's height be divided by the natural logarithm of his age, and the result called his affability, this quality can be uniquely determined, but it gives no. indication of the reception he is likely to give us. We can either (a) define probability in a purely mathematical way and so obtain a unique solution which may be both consistent and correct (although, in my opinion, Sir Arthur Eddington's solution was neither) ; or (b) refrain from calling meaningless mathematical functions probability, and then obtain two solutions to each problem.
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DINGLE, H. The Solution, by the Method of Association, of Problems in Inverse Probability. Nature 135, 1074 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/1351074a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1351074a0
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