Possible Worlds and Actual Worlds: How can we Decide What’s True?

This chapter looks at the process of ‘statistical inference’: using a limited sample of data to draw conclusions about a wider context. We start with the approach based on a famous theorem of probability, ‘Bayes’ theorem’, and then move on to introduce two other approaches — ‘confidence intervals’ and ‘null hypothesis tests’ — which are explored in more depth in Chapters 7 and 8.