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The Reference Class

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Henry E. Kyburg Jr.
Henry E. Kyburg Jr.*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, The University of Rochester
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Abstract

The system presented by the author in The Logical Foundations of Statistical Inference (Kyburg 1974) suffered from certain technical difficulties, and from a major practical difficulty; it was hard to be sure, in discussing examples and applications, when you had got hold of the right reference class. The present paper, concerned mainly with the characterization of randomness, resolves the technical difficulties and provides a well structured framework for the choice of a reference class. The definition of randomness that leads to this framework is simplified and clarified in a number of respects. It resolves certain puzzles raised by S. Spielman and W. Harper in their contributions to Profiles: Henry E. Kyburg, Jr. and Isaac Levi (R. Bogdan (ed.) 1982).

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 1983 , pp. 374 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1983

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References

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