Objective Certainty: How Can We Know?

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SUMMARY

The discussion centers on the concept of objective certainty, particularly in the context of Bayesian analysis as referenced in the television show Numb3rs. Participants argue that the character's shifting certainty percentages (from 86% to 92%) lack a clear methodological basis, suggesting reliance on intuition rather than rigorous statistical analysis. The conversation highlights the philosophical implications of certainty, referencing Descartes and the subjective nature of confidence levels in data interpretation. Bayesian statistics is identified as a key tool for deriving such certainty from data.

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pctopgs
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Hey guys, I'll get straight to the point

Today I was watching a television show in which a character said "from he data I analyzed, I'm 86% sure that I'm right" but when new data was revealed to the character, he says "Now I'm 92% certain that I'm right". The character doesn't show how he arrived at these numbers, and that's why I'm here: Is it possible to be objectively certain about something? If so, how?

I'm anticipating the character was just going by intuition and just made up numbers, but I just think it's unlikely that's that case...the Show btw is Numb3rs.
 
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I think it comes down to a matter of opinion and semantics; but it would be pretty hard to argue that there is an absolute, objective certainty about anything (certainly Descartes wouldn't think so).
The way one would come about numbers like that would be through a Bayesian analysis of the data and the theory he's comparing them to. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_statistics
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_level"
 
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