BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

PROBABILITY (BAYESIAN) 2)3)

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"The measure of the plausibility of an hypothese or proposition".

Bayesian probabilities offer a measure of subjective evaluations.

Such probabilities "cannot readily be understood as frequencies, but they have a natural interpretation as indicating the speaker's degree of belief or confidence in the statement, given the available evidence" (W.H. JEFFERYS & J.O. BERGER, 1992, p.66).

Bayesian probabilities are used to quantify a belief or hypothesis related to some situation that cannot be experimentally repeated or produced, in which case no frequencies can be measured.

Of course "… subjective estimates (can) be modified as new information becomes available, leading to the revisions of a priori probabilities" (J.van GIGCH, 1978, p.202).

Generally, new information "more or less"-settles within the brackets of the former probabilities evaluation."More or less"means that the effect of the new information will in most cases lead to narrower brackets of evaluation, i.e. diminishing the spread between upper and lesser values. An interesting practical example has been given by some marine biologists who re-evaluated the rockfish stocks in California (K. SHMIDT, 2003, p. 44-47)

→ Fluctuation; Predictability; Randomness (Constrained); Randomness reduction

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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