a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
wasoxygen  ·  3759 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: For everyone in the book exchange: The Necessity of Marginalia

    flagamuffin and wasoxygen refused to write in books
After that conversation I made an effort to write in the next book I read, Thinking, Fast and Slow, in addition to my usual habit of taking notes on a bookmark (a Titanic postcard, in this case).

Here I take issue with the author's seemingly overcomplicated solution to the taxi problem below (though his purpose may have been to demonstrate Bayes' Theorem).

    A cab was involved in a hit and run accident at night. Two cab companies, the Green and the Blue, operate in the city. You are given the following data:

    • 85% of the cabs in the city are Green and 15% are Blue.

    • A witness identified the cab as Blue. The court tested the reliability of the witness under the same circumstances that existed on the night of the accident and concluded that the witness correctly identified each one of the two colors 80% of the time and failed 20% of the time.

    What is the probability that the cab involved in the accident was Blue rather than Green?