Subjective Theory of Probability

Erfan Nazari

1:00, Friday, March 29
BURN 1025



Anyone has a personal degree of belief and judgment about whether different outcomes are likely to occur or not which is qualitative. How can you convert this into quantitative data which serve as probability values? I will discuss a method to convert subjective probabilities into classical and numerical probabilities for both unconditional and conditional cases. In other words, we will introduce a strategy to make personal beliefs into numbers satisfying Kolmogorov's axioms of probability theory. This method was introduced independently by Ramsey and De Finetti. We will prove the fundamental theorem about this method i.e. Ramsey - De Finetti theorem.

All graduate students are invited. As with all talks in the graduate student seminar, this talk will be accessible to all graduate students in math and stats.

This seminar was made possible by funding from the McGill mathematics and statistics department and PGSS.

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