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The Say of the Week - on Decision Making
By Tommaso Dorigo | October 10th 2009 08:27 AM | 5 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
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About Tommaso Dorigo

I am an experimental particle physicist working with the CMS experiment at CERN and the CDF experiment at Fermilab. In my spare time I play chess, abuse the piano, and aim my dobson telescope at... Full Bio

"It turns out that any optimal classical decision rule is also some Bayesian rule. In other words, even if the decision maker is not a Bayesian, he will behave as if he were!"

Frederick James, Statistical Methods in Experimental Physics

Comments

lumidek's picture
I actually agree with that. But a part of the differences between the group is that for a Bayesian, it may be more important how the people behave. For a frequentist, it's more important what is fundamentally and objectively true and justifiable. So even if one behaves according to some rules that are helpful in many contexts, it doesn't mean that the rules prove the truth rather than just the utility.

Luboš Motl | 10/12/09 | 02:08 AM
Mankind seeks both truth and utility. What does that make us then?

David Degner (not verified) | 10/12/09 | 17:52 PM
dorigo's picture
I guess it just makes us human David.
Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 10/13/09 | 01:34 AM
Thank you for your blog, it is very interesting, but I’m curious, do you ever play queens pawn opening? When I was in my formative (college) years Fisher played Spassky in Reykjavik. Spassky opened queens pawn. We know what happened.

David Degner (not verified) | 10/14/09 | 04:36 AM
dorigo's picture
Hi David,
no, I never did. I have played maybe 15,000 chess games in my life, and I opened 1.d4 probably just a dozen times.
I don't think the result of the match of the Century would have been different had Spassky chosen different opening strategies. Fischer was basically unbeatable in 1972; probably the only person capable of beating him then was Fischer himself - through his prima-donna behaviour and his childish requests. Fortunately those were not enough in reality, but they might have made him resign the match in some scenarios.
Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 10/14/09 | 07:09 AM

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