Man as an Intuitive Statistician

This review considers experimental research that has used probability theory and statistics as a framework within which to study human statistical inference. The experiments have investigated estimates of proportions, means, variances, and correlations, both of samples and of populations. In some experiments, parameters of populations were stationary; in others, the parameters changed over time. The experiments also investigated the determination of sample size and trial-by-trial predictions of events to be sampled from a population. In general, the results indicate that probability theory and statistics can be used as the basis for psychological models that integrate and account for human performance in a wide range of inferential tasks.

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