Explicativity: a mathematical theory of explanation with statistical applications

By explicativity is meant the extent to which one proposition or event explains why another one should be believed. Detailed mathematical and philosophical arguments are given for accepting a specific formula for explicativity that was previously proposed by the author with much less complete discussion. Some implications of the formula are discussed, and it is applied to several problems of statistical estimation and significance testing with intuitively appealing results. The work is intended to be a contribution to both philosophy and statistics.

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