Laura Macchi (1994) On the Communication and Comprehension of Probabilistic Information
. Psycoloquy: 5(11) Base Rate (11)
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Psycoloquy 5(11): On the Communication and Comprehension of Probabilistic Information
ON THE COMMUNICATION AND COMPREHENSION OF PROBABILISTIC INFORMATION
Commentary on Koehler on Base-Rate
Laura Macchi
Istituto di Psicologia
Universita degli Studi di Milano
via Larga, 19
20122 - Milano Italy
LMACCHI@imiucca.csi.unimi.it
Abstract
Most tasks used to demonstrate the base rate fallacy are
ambiguous about a crucial assumption required for properly applying
Bayes' rule. This results in a verbal confusion between likelihood
and posterior probability. Experiments that disambiguate the texts
presented to subjects have a large effect on the use of the base
rate. Some comments on the ecological validity of tasks are offered.
Keywords
Base rate fallacy, Bayes' theorem, decision making,
ecological validity, ethics, fallacy, judgment, probability.
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