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Natural frequencies improve Bayesian reasoning in simple and complex inference tasks
Representing statistical information in terms of natural frequencies rather than probabilities improves performance in Bayesian inference tasks. This beneficial effect of natural frequencies has been demonstrated in a variety of applied domains such as medicine, law, and education. Yet all the resea...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4604268/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26528197 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01473 |
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author | Hoffrage, Ulrich Krauss, Stefan Martignon, Laura Gigerenzer, Gerd |
author_facet | Hoffrage, Ulrich Krauss, Stefan Martignon, Laura Gigerenzer, Gerd |
author_sort | Hoffrage, Ulrich |
collection | PubMed |
description | Representing statistical information in terms of natural frequencies rather than probabilities improves performance in Bayesian inference tasks. This beneficial effect of natural frequencies has been demonstrated in a variety of applied domains such as medicine, law, and education. Yet all the research and applications so far have been limited to situations where one dichotomous cue is used to infer which of two hypotheses is true. Real-life applications, however, often involve situations where cues (e.g., medical tests) have more than one value, where more than two hypotheses (e.g., diseases) are considered, or where more than one cue is available. In Study 1, we show that natural frequencies, compared to information stated in terms of probabilities, consistently increase the proportion of Bayesian inferences made by medical students in four conditions—three cue values, three hypotheses, two cues, or three cues—by an average of 37 percentage points. In Study 2, we show that teaching natural frequencies for simple tasks with one dichotomous cue and two hypotheses leads to a transfer of learning to complex tasks with three cue values and two cues, with a proportion of 40 and 81% correct inferences, respectively. Thus, natural frequencies facilitate Bayesian reasoning in a much broader class of situations than previously thought. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4604268 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-46042682015-11-02 Natural frequencies improve Bayesian reasoning in simple and complex inference tasks Hoffrage, Ulrich Krauss, Stefan Martignon, Laura Gigerenzer, Gerd Front Psychol Psychology Representing statistical information in terms of natural frequencies rather than probabilities improves performance in Bayesian inference tasks. This beneficial effect of natural frequencies has been demonstrated in a variety of applied domains such as medicine, law, and education. Yet all the research and applications so far have been limited to situations where one dichotomous cue is used to infer which of two hypotheses is true. Real-life applications, however, often involve situations where cues (e.g., medical tests) have more than one value, where more than two hypotheses (e.g., diseases) are considered, or where more than one cue is available. In Study 1, we show that natural frequencies, compared to information stated in terms of probabilities, consistently increase the proportion of Bayesian inferences made by medical students in four conditions—three cue values, three hypotheses, two cues, or three cues—by an average of 37 percentage points. In Study 2, we show that teaching natural frequencies for simple tasks with one dichotomous cue and two hypotheses leads to a transfer of learning to complex tasks with three cue values and two cues, with a proportion of 40 and 81% correct inferences, respectively. Thus, natural frequencies facilitate Bayesian reasoning in a much broader class of situations than previously thought. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-10-14 /pmc/articles/PMC4604268/ /pubmed/26528197 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01473 Text en Copyright © 2015 Hoffrage, Krauss, Martignon and Gigerenzer. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Hoffrage, Ulrich Krauss, Stefan Martignon, Laura Gigerenzer, Gerd Natural frequencies improve Bayesian reasoning in simple and complex inference tasks |
title | Natural frequencies improve Bayesian reasoning in simple and complex inference tasks |
title_full | Natural frequencies improve Bayesian reasoning in simple and complex inference tasks |
title_fullStr | Natural frequencies improve Bayesian reasoning in simple and complex inference tasks |
title_full_unstemmed | Natural frequencies improve Bayesian reasoning in simple and complex inference tasks |
title_short | Natural frequencies improve Bayesian reasoning in simple and complex inference tasks |
title_sort | natural frequencies improve bayesian reasoning in simple and complex inference tasks |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4604268/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26528197 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01473 |
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