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    The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy
    The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy
    The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy

    Written by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

    Narrated by Laural Merlington

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Bayes' rule appears to be a straightforward, one-line theorem: by updating our initial beliefs with objective new information, we get a new and improved belief. To its adherents, it is an elegant statement about learning from experience. To its opponents, it is subjectivity run amok.In the first-ever account of Bayes' rule for general readers, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne explores this controversial theorem and the human obsessions surrounding it. She traces its discovery by an amateur mathematician in the 1740s through its development into roughly its modern form by French scientist Pierre Simon Laplace. She reveals why respected statisticians rendered it professionally taboo for one hundred and fifty years-at the same time that practitioners relied on it to solve crises involving great uncertainty and scanty information, even breaking Germany's Enigma code during World War II, and explains how the advent of off-the-shelf computer technology in the 1980s proved to be a game-changer. Today, Bayes' rule is used everywhere from DNA decoding to Homeland Security.Drawing on primary source material and interviews with statisticians and other scientists, The Theory That Would Not Die is the riveting account of how a seemingly simple theorem ignited one of the greatest controversies of all time.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 30, 2012
    ISBN9781452676852
    The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy
    Author

    Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

    Sharon Bertsch McGrayne is the author of five books on the history of science, including Nobel Prize Women in Science, The Theory That Would Not Die, and A Lab of One’s Own, which she coauthored with Rita Colwell. She lives in Seattle.

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    Reviews for The Theory That Would Not Die

    3.5/5

    116 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Wonderful (in the true sense of the word) history of Bayes Theorem. Incredible journey about a shunned theorem -through human disbelief, scepticism, personal vendettas and military secrecy - that changed the world. You are probably reading the review as a result of this theorem! From the gambling table to machine based translation, from exploding stars to mapping genomes, this book puts the theorem into it's right place within the world. Clear and gripping narrative style combing the human, mathematical and philosophical. Just loved it!
    • 3/5
      Bayes really deserves a better book than this one. I don't think it's particularly well-written, and it makes the subject matter appear drier than it really is. I think there's a good book in the subject matter, but this one isn't it.
    • 2/5
      Lacks sufficient mathematical presentation to make the history meaningful.
    • 5/5
      Even if you failed math in college this book is good. Basically it's a history one statistical theorem. Put simply by updating intial your belief about something with objective new information , you get a new and improved belief. So simple but so controvrsial. The book is not easy to read in fact I was Googling some of the ideas, persons, places mentioned to understand what was going on but in the end it was worth all the time spent.
    • 3/5
      Sharon McGrayne is a very good and engaging writer. She has an interesting story to tell about the last 250 years of Bayesian thinking, how the theory has developed, and its many applications including how to price insurance, how to aim artillery, how to break the Enigma code, who wrote The Federalist Papers, how to find Russian nuclear subs, how to estimate the probability of a shuttle disaster, when to do various cancer screenings, whether cigarette smoking is harmful, etc. She also has a great set of characters, a parade of statisticians who are more colorful than I could have imagined, from the pioneers of Bayes, Price and Laplace to most recent statisticians like Cornfield, Tukey and Mosteller.

      But, the book is deeply flawed and disappointing because it does so little to actually explain Bayes Theorem, how it was applied, how it led to different confusions than frequentism, and how the two have recently been theoretically synthesized. Most of this is not very complicated, one knows a decent amount already, but it would be more interesting to understand hot it was applied. Instead, the book concentrates much more on personality and the more surface descriptions rather than dwelling deeper and working out at least a few examples in more detail, both more of the theory from first principals but also better understanding what data and calculations various of her protagonists were using. Absent that, the book is often literally superficial.

      Still, the book has a lot of upside -- but given that there is not exactly a huge selection of books covering this ground (unlike, say, quantum mechanics) to have this as nearly the sole choice is disappointing.
    • 2/5
      I was disappointed by this book. I had read a good review that played up this interesting view on the world of statistics and how the Bayes Rule had becoming a compelling tool for statistical analysis.Perhaps it was my poor showing in statistics during my college days. Perhaps I wanted to make up for my mistake of signing up for a course like stats that had class on Friday afternoons. But I thought this book could be interesting, despite the somewhat dry core subject. The book did little for me in helping to show how the rule worked in theory and in practice. It did a great job of showing the power of Bayes Rule as a problem solving tool. It may have lead to the victory in WWII for its use in cracking the German U-Boat enigma codes.Maybe I had my expectations too high and maybe I was looking for more substance about the statistics tools themselves
    • 3/5
      Interesting subject, very poorly written
    • 5/5
      A well written history of Bayes Theorem. I found the information fascinating and educational. This is one of the best books I have read in years. I strongly recommend this to anyone who has an interest in statistics, science, and history.
    • 2/5
      The book basically says that some people like using Bayesian statistics, and other people don't think that Bayesian statistics should be utilized. However, it did not discuss in any detail how to apply Bayesian statistics to any actual problems, nor does it give any numeric examples. Although there were many pages of references in the back, the book did not seem to make any points clearly.
    • 4/5
      I love Bayesian probability, and here's a book about it! Actually it's mostly about the people and the politics surrounding the Bayesians' fight against frequentists (who didn't believe in using the subjective probabilities that full-on Bayes/Laplace analysis requires). McGrayne tracks the various uses of Bayes to solve problems across multiple fields, from cryptography to finding lost submarines, but I really wished it had been mathier: I felt like a lot of times I was taking her word that Bayes made the problem at issue easier to solve than frequentism. Concededly, it can be super hard to explain this--I have had hour-long discussions with very smart people over the Monty Hall problem. But I wished she'd tried more; her explanation of Monte Carlo modeling was clear and easy to follow.