The Theory That Would Not Die, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
The Theory That Would Not Die, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
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The Theory That Would Not Die
How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy

Author: Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

Narrator: Laural Merlington

Unabridged: 11 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/30/2012


Synopsis

Bayes' rule appears to be a straightforward, one-line theorem: by updating our initial beliefs with objective new information, we get a new and improved belief. To its adherents, it is an elegant statement about learning from experience. To its opponents, it is subjectivity run amok.

In the first-ever account of Bayes' rule for general readers, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne explores this controversial theorem and the human obsessions surrounding it. She traces its discovery by an amateur mathematician in the 1740s through its development into roughly its modern form by French scientist Pierre Simon Laplace. She reveals why respected statisticians rendered it professionally taboo for one hundred and fifty years—at the same time that practitioners relied on it to solve crises involving great uncertainty and scanty information, even breaking Germany's Enigma code during World War II, and explains how the advent of off-the-shelf computer technology in the 1980s proved to be a game-changer. Today, Bayes' rule is used everywhere from DNA decoding to Homeland Security.

Drawing on primary source material and interviews with statisticians and other scientists, The Theory That Would Not Die is the riveting account of how a seemingly simple theorem ignited one of the greatest controversies of all time.


About Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

Sharon Bertsch McGrayne is the author of critically-acclaimed books about scientific discoveries and the scientists who make them. Her published works include Prometheans in the Lab, Nobel Prize Women in Science, and Blue Genes and Polyester Plants. Sharon's work has been reviewed in Nature, Physics Today, Significance, the Washington Post, Ms., JAMA, Chemistry and Engineering News, New Scientist, American Scientist, PopularMechanics.com, among other publications. She has appeared on NPR's Talk of the Nation: Science Friday and been invited to speak at more than twenty universities in the U.S. and in Europe, at national laboratories such as Argonne National Laboratory and the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), and at the Centennial meeting of the American Physical Society.
She has written for Science, Scientific American, Discover magazine, Isis, American Physical Society News, The Times Higher Education Supplement, and Notable American Women. Excerpts of her books have appeared in The Chemical Educator, The Physics Teacher, and Chemical Heritage Foundation magazine.
A former prize-winning journalist for Scripps-Howard, Crain's, Gannett and other newspapers, Sharon has coauthored numerous articles about physics for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. A graduate of Swarthmore College, she lives in Seattle, Washington.


Reviews

Goodreads review by rmn on September 03, 2012

If only I had known how to use Bayesian probabilities before reading this book I could have taken the probability of my liking a book well received in a NY Times Book Review as my prior, plugged that in to a Bayesian calculation as to whether or not I would like this book, and quickly would have com......more

Goodreads review by David on February 18, 2012

I think this is the first book about Bayes' theorem and its applications, for the general reader. The book does not explicitly state the theorem as a mathematical formula, until the second appendix. However, the general idea is described, as well the general ideas behind it. The history of the theor......more

Goodreads review by Josh on November 22, 2022

What is known today as Bayes' theorem was invented, like most things, by the marquis de Laplace, but Bayes really did come up with the most important part of it. (By modern conventions we'd call it the Bayes-Price-Laplace rule, but it's too late.) The idea was known then as "inverse probability": pr......more

Goodreads review by Rafael on December 25, 2011

I wish I had liked this book more than I actually did. Most of the stories reported are very interesting and entertaining, reflecting how academics have been fiercely debating conceptual aspects of Bayes theorem, as well as the bayesian-frequentist feud, while at the same time it was being successfu......more

Goodreads review by Charlene on June 17, 2016

This was an excellent biography of Bayes' Rule, which basically glossed over Bayes himself. The author chose instead to examine the lesser known scientists and applications associated with Bayes. As a result, after reading this you are likely to call Bayes' Rule BLP Rule, for Bayes-Laplace Rule. The......more