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That’s the title of the Organizations & Market post referencing this latest New York Times piece. We here in humanities land love to hear that our math can be useful math too. Hot on its heels comes this great crash course in Bayesian reasoning – required reading for every student interested in, well, doing probabilities right.
One of the common refrains in my field is that failures of Bayesian reasoning are behind lots of our errors of reasoning in general – Linda the Feminist Bank Teller and the Asian Disease framing problem immediately come to mind. Consider the first problem:
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.
Which is more probable?
Linda is a bank teller.
Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.
And then the second. There will be a short quiz next period.
A recent article in the Toronto star entitled “Embracing Goodness without God” focused on the rising percentage of atheists in Canada.
A recent Harris-Decima poll found that 23 per cent of Canadians do not believe in any God.
Holy Frack! 23%!. As a Canadian I’m proud to see that enough people are finding the courage to come out of the proverbial atheist closet. Apparently Kathy Meidell agrees with me.
“The number just keeps going up – or, at least, the number of people willing to come out of the closet is going up,”
Now this brings up an interesting point of converstation among atheists. Is there a proverbial closet? Even as someone who wasn’t raised religious in any way, and as someone who finds themselves rather courageous to begin with (I can sleep in the dark), I still found it hard to tell many people I was an atheist. To many, the word is still associated with evil. I would say, from what I’ve observed, that coming out of the atheist closet is contextual. It was rather easy in a very liberal region of Canada, and even so, the fear of coming out was still there, even if only slightly.
How hard it must be in more conservative places I can only imagine.
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Factoista is an online freethought advocacy organization that relies on its users for content. Through international broad-based collaboration with its users, and other groups and organizations, it strives to provide timely and comprehensive news, views, reviews, and creative multimedia on issues at the forefront of everything under the umbrella of freethought:
1. Defending civil liberties like freedoms of speech, inquiry, information, religion or lack thereof, and association
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Halleluja, “Atheism on the Rise in Canada”
Friday, August 8th, 2008A recent article in the Toronto star entitled “Embracing Goodness without God” focused on the rising percentage of atheists in Canada.
Holy Frack! 23%!. As a Canadian I’m proud to see that enough people are finding the courage to come out of the proverbial atheist closet. Apparently Kathy Meidell agrees with me.
Now this brings up an interesting point of converstation among atheists. Is there a proverbial closet? Even as someone who wasn’t raised religious in any way, and as someone who finds themselves rather courageous to begin with (I can sleep in the dark), I still found it hard to tell many people I was an atheist. To many, the word is still associated with evil. I would say, from what I’ve observed, that coming out of the atheist closet is contextual. It was rather easy in a very liberal region of Canada, and even so, the fear of coming out was still there, even if only slightly.
How hard it must be in more conservative places I can only imagine.
Tags: atheism, canada, statistics, toronto star
Posted in Commentary, News | 3 Comments »