From within the dark confines of the skull, the brain builds its own version of reality. By weaving together expectations and information gleaned from the senses, the brain creates a story about the ...

Having a strong opinion about an issue can make it hard to take in new information about it, or to consider other options when they’re presented. Thankfully, there’s an old rule that can help us avoid ...

First articulated in the 18th century by a hobbyist-mathematician seeking to reason backward from effects to cause, Bayes’ theorem spent the better part of two centuries struggling for recognition and ...

Whether in everyday life or in the lab, we often want to make inferences about hypotheses. Whether I’m deciding it’s safe to run a yellow light, when I need to leave home in order to make it to my ...

Robert Matthews talks of the connection between belief and Bayes’s theorem (13 March, p 38). He seems to think that, because you have to start with some arbitrary level of belief in order for Bayesian ...