Can You Outsmart an Economist? by Steven E. Landsburg

Author:Steven E. Landsburg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

b) If the odds against naturally purple hair are a billion to one, then the probability that there’s even one possible culprit besides Nathan is about 4 million divided by a billion, or about 4/10 of 1 percent. That makes it at least 99.6 percent certain that Nathan is the murderer. (It’s actually more than that, because even in the highly unlikely event that Nathan does have a purple-haired doppelganger, he could still be guilty.) That’s damned near certain.

The moral of this problem is that you cannot assess evidence without weighing it against relevant background information. (In this case, the relevant background information is that there are 4 million people in Manhattan.) This is a moral that runs at large: it applies in the courtroom, it applies when you’re analyzing economic data, and it applies in the doctor’s office.

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