May 2024 J. B. S. Haldane’s Rule of Succession
Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Sandy Zabell, Quentin F. Gronau
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Statist. Sci. 39(2): 346-354 (May 2024). DOI: 10.1214/23-STS912

Abstract

After Bayes, the oldest Bayesian account of enumerative induction is given by Laplace’s so-called rule of succession: if all n observed instances of a phenomenon to date exhibit a given character, the probability that the next instance of that phenomenon will also exhibit the character is n+1n+2. Laplace’s rule however has the apparently counterintuitive mathematical consequence that the corresponding “universal generalization” (every future observation of this type will also exhibit that character) has zero probability. In 1932, the British scientist J. B. S. Haldane proposed an alternative rule giving a universal generalization the positive probability n+1n+2×n+3n+2. A year later, Harold Jeffreys proposed essentially the same rule in the case of a finite population. A related variant rule results in a predictive probability of n+1n+2×n+4n+3. These arguably elegant adjustments of the original Laplacean form have the advantage that they give predictions better aligned with intuition and common sense. In this paper, we discuss J. B. S. Haldane’s rule and its variants, placing them in their historical context, and relating them to subsequent philosophical discussions.

Funding Statement

The first author was supported by a Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research grant (016.Vici.170.083).

Citation

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Eric-Jan Wagenmakers. Sandy Zabell. Quentin F. Gronau. "J. B. S. Haldane’s Rule of Succession." Statist. Sci. 39 (2) 346 - 354, May 2024. https://doi.org/10.1214/23-STS912

Information

Published: May 2024
First available in Project Euclid: 5 May 2024

Digital Object Identifier: 10.1214/23-STS912

Keywords: Statistical evidence , Universal generalization

Rights: Copyright © 2024 Institute of Mathematical Statistics

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Vol.39 • No. 2 • May 2024
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