Posted on 05/21/2012 11:06:43 PM PDT by neverdem
A mathematical tool is offered to evaluate the likelihood, in light of the Breitbart disclosure, that Mr. Obama was born in the United States.
How ought one evaluate the evidentiary significance of the 1991 literary agency promotional booklet claiming that their client Barack Obama was born in Kenya?
The "birther" issue is clearly one that is very charged. This contribution is directed toward those persons who are willing to reason carefully about it no matter what conclusion they may have reached so far.
It should be acknowledged at the outset that no conclusive answers are offered herein. In fact, the chief result of the following probabilistic analysis is that interesting and potentially important questions are raised that, absent the analysis, might not otherwise have been asked.
It is hoped that the subsequent presentation will help stimulate genuine debate, particularly since persons are encouraged to form their own conclusions. If the presentation ends up contributing to meaningful, genuine debate, it will be because the great Reverend Bayes provided an excellent rational and scientific framework within which to reason about questions like the one at hand. Should reasonable people conclude that the booklet lends any additional credence to the idea that Obama was born in Kenya and not the United States? Unsurprisingly, the answer to that turns out to be: it depends. What it depends on, however, turns out to be quite fascinating, and may end up spurring additional investigation along lines that, it must be admitted, are sometimes paradoxical and therefore very easy to miss.
Those who are unfamiliar with Bayes' theorem may be interested to know that is has wide application in sciences including biology, physics, criminology, and much else besides. With apologies to those already comfortable with the theorem, let us begin considering the impact of the booklet with...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
So, it all comes down to probability.
: )
I know Bayes theorem, so I’ll summarize in plain language: Bayes accounts for the likelihoods of false positive and false negatives. WTH does that mean? You look at the odds (reasons) Obama would lie then vs the odds (reasons) he’s lying now.
Then, there was little benefit to lying. Now there is a lot.
Come to your own conclusions...
It’s late out here ...will come back tomorrow.
“Then, there was little benefit to lying.”
Ah, but the penalties for lying were much less too. After all, who would be interested in fact-checking a random author’s bio.
Ooops. Add the odds/reasons for telling the truth, too.
You can phrase Bayes in terms of liabilities, benefits, or a mixed measure. The key is looking at the meaning of true positives, true negatives, false positives, and false negatives. But your point is well taken.
This is not a very good application of Bayes Theorem.
Obama was either born in the US or not. That he at times claimed he was not can not change whether he was or not. That he at times claimed that he was can not change whether he was or not. There is no covariance between either claim and what happened in the past.
Perhaps the author means deductive logic. That is not Bayes Theorem.
But deductive logic says that Obama claimed to be foreign born when it suited him and claimed to be US born when that benefitted him. So that does not answer this question either.
Bayes does not apply to the fact of where obastard was born, but it does apply to the veracity (or rather lack thereof) of his statements about where he was born. For analogous situation, Google “Bayes theorem breast cancer diagnosis” (or close - been a while).
Sure there were great benefits to lying then.
Lying could get Obama entry to prestigious schools and aid for foreign students from depressed African countries.
An incremental benefit at best given his connections and race, which would have provided those benefits anyway. Now, he could have perceived a need for more, which would validate your point. Except wasn’t the document at issue created after he was at Harvard?
There was benefit to lying then. In the 1980s I read a lot of Essence and Ebony. Having an African past was VERY COOL in the AA community, and this was, essentially, a white guy with some African features. He was brought up in a white family in a white world (or Asian). Obama had the cool African name, and if he said he was from Kenya, that was the icing on the cake. I bet the most exciting thing for Michelle about Barack was getting that cool African name.
And of course there is benefit to lying now. Now meaning 2007 when this new lie started, the lie that he was securely born in the USA. If he had been, he’d have one unambiguous American document from his past. He doesn’t.
I assume he was born in a Canadian unwed mother’s home, and kept by his birth mother Stanley Ann at the last minute. This fits one law: Occam’s razor.
The logic of Bayes’ theorem is based on sampling. If you pick a person at random, then the probability he was born in Kenya is just the fraction of the sampling population that was born in Kenya. Now you’re told the person’s agent said he was born in Kenya.
So now we must ask, what fraction of the population of whom their agent has said they were born in Kenya, were in fact born in Kenya.
So Bayes’ theorem is just asking us to decide how likely this information is to be bogus. But that’s what we’re not sure of.
Doesn’t seem like the correct application for Bayes theorem. Here is an example to judge by.
In two card poker, there are 6 ways to get dealt a pair of Aces and 16 ways to get dealt both an Ace and a King. So if your up against a player that only plays AA or AK, and you have QQ, then you have him beat 62.5% of the time, slightly less then 2 out of 3.
Yes but as the article stated this document could well have been based on previous documents that stated that Obama was born in Kenya.
It is quite likely that Obama’s college transcripts and related college documents state that he is on Kenyan origins.
If this is true it gives plenty of reason that Obama has not released these documents.
So the only real conclusion one can draw is that Obama is a liar about the basic facts of his life. Either he lied then and/or is lying now.
Yet our esteemed main stream journalists of today are unable and/or unwilling to see the obvious. That makes their credibility zero.
Bayesian reasoning 101: Ask the right question. I didn’t. I assumed (boo!) — and therefore looked at the probabilities — that he was lying then OR lying now.
The right question — and therefore the right probability analysis — is what he lying then, now, or BOTH.
My bad...
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Thanks for putting this up. You beat me to it. ;)
Yes, it was a long article, and to be honest, since I'm not naturally mathematically gifted, I had to go back and read about two thirds of the piece over again to really understand it (nearly) entirely.
This is highly damning stuff, simply from a probability standpoint. If I was a bookie taking odds on a fair and honest bout of the arguments and a full presentation of documentary evidence I'd lean very heavily toward "Obama"'s political career being at an end, especially given that the chances are that there are other examples (and you can bet that there are) of claimed Kenyan birth, as alluded to in the editorial.
Sadly, there is little that's fair or honest about the shenanigans surrounding the origins, upbringing, formative years, political rise to power and continued occupation of the presidency by the man calling himself "Obama."
At least, not yet.
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