From Peter Standen
Regina Nuzzo describes someone with a frequentist approach to statistics tossing a coin for a drink in a pub (14 March, p 38). They would be a dull drinking companion, insisting that when a tossed coin lands unseen in the hand it isn’t sensible to talk of the probability of it being a head. Until the outcome is known it is surely sensible to wonder whether I’ll get a free drink.
The important event here is the gaining of human knowledge, not what state an unobserved coin is in. Our frequentist’s real problem is the belief in a scientifically knowable objective reality that exists independent of observations. Similarly, from the human knowledge perspective there is really no need to tie oneself in knots to explain the “existence” of the Higgs: it is highly probable from what we know at present. Your story on quantum Bayesianism (10 May 2014, p 32) makes a similar point.
Darlington, West Australia
