Reading Keynes' Treatise on Probability

The book A Treatise on Probability was published by John Maynard Keynes in 1921. It contains a critical assessment of the foundations of probability and of the current statistical methodology. As a modern reader, we review here the aspects that are most related with statistics, avoiding a neophyte's perspective on the philosophical issues. In particular, the book is quite critical of the Bayesian approach and we examine the arguments provided by Keynes, as well as the alternative he proposes. This review does not subsume the scholarly study of Aldrich (2008a) relating Keynes with the statistics community of the time.

[1]  E. Mammen.  The Bootstrap and Edgeworth Expansion , 1997 .

[2]  A. Dale,et al.  A History of Inverse Probability from Thomas Bayes to Karl Pearson , 1993 .

[3]  Lyle Broemeling,et al.  Studies in the history of probability and statistics XLVIII The Bayesian contributions of Ernest Lhoste , 2003 .

[4]  S. Fienberg.  When did Bayesian inference become "Bayesian"? , 2006 .

[5]  Stephen M. Stigler,et al.  Statistics on the Table: The History of Statistical Concepts and , 1999 .

[6]  A. Kolmogoroff.  Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung , 1933 .

[7]  J. Keynes.  A Treatise on Probability. , 1923 .

[8]  Anders Hald,et al.  On the history of maximum likelihood in relation to inverse probability and least squares , 1999 .

[9]  J. Keynes.  The Principal Averages and the Laws of Error which Lead to Them , 1911 .

[10]  L. M. M.-T..  Theory of Probability , 1929, Nature.

[11]  P. Walley.  Statistical Reasoning with Imprecise Probabilities , 1990 .

[12]  R. Fisher,et al.  On the Mathematical Foundations of Theoretical Statistics , 1922 .

[13]  B. M. Hill,et al.  Theory of Probability , 1990 .

[14]  J. Aldrich,et al.  R. A. Fisher on Bayes and Bayes' Theorem , 2008 .

[15]  Wilford W. Spradlin,et al.  The Search for Certainty , 1984, Springer New York.

[16]  Roland P. Falkner,et al.  History of statistics , 1891 .

[17]  J. Haldane,et al.  A note on inverse probability , 1932, Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.

[18]  P. Taylor.  Fooled by Randomness , 2012 .

[19]  E. Pitman,et al.  Sufficient statistics and intrinsic accuracy , 1936, Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.

[20]  J. Aldrich.  Keynes among the Statisticians , 2008 .

[21]  R. Fisher.  Statistical Methods for Research Workers , 1971 .

[22]  B. O. Koopman.  On distributions admitting a sufficient statistic , 1936 .

[23]  John Maynard Keynes,et al.  The economic consequences of peace , 2022 .

[24]  S. Stigler.  Statisticians and the History of Economics , 2002, Journal of the History of Economic Thought.

[25]  Helly.  Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung , 1936 .

[26]  Christian P. Robert,et al.  The Bayesian choice , 1994 .