Teaching statistics in the physics curriculum: Unifying and clarifying role of subjective probability

Abstract

Subjective probability is based on the intuitive idea that probability quantifies the degree of belief that an event will occur. A probability theory based on this idea represents the most general framework for handling uncertainty. A brief introduction to subjective probability and Bayesian inference is given, with comments on typical misconceptions which tend to discredit it and comparisons to other approaches.Comment: 15 pages, LateX, 1 eps figure, corrected some typos. Invited paper for the American Journal of Physics. This paper and related work are also available at http://www-zeus.roma1.infn.it/~agostini