Dear Professor Bickis,
In Italian the two words
Previsione=Prevision and Predizione=Prediction have different acceptation.
(Devoto-Oli Dictionary)
Previsione = Elaborazione mentale relativa al futuro, sulla base di
indizi piu' o meno sicuri
(Mental thinking about the future based on more or less secure clues)
Example: Previsioni atmosferiche =Weather forecasts
Predizione = previsione autorevole e solenne riferita come oggetto di
una previsione o profezia
(Authoritative and solemn predictions referred as the subject of a
prediction or prophecy)
Best regards, Serena
Professor Bickis <bickis(a)snoopy.usask.ca> ha scritto:
Thanks for all your collective erudition. I am aware that “gamble”
or its synonyms “wager” and “bet” have been used by many writers in
the context of probability and decisions theory. I was thinking of
the use of the word in the generic abstract sense that Walley uses.
Since Walley’s development picks up on de Finetti and Williams in
using “prevision”, I wondered if one of them had also used “gamble”,
but it seems that they did not.Googling some Italian web sites on probability, I did come across
the word “scommessa” in discussion of expectation/prevision, but I
wonder if de Finetti himself used it in the sense that Walley used
“gamble”.I am also a bit mystified by the history of the word “prevision”.
Writing in French his 1937 paper, de Finetti uses “prévision” rather
than the more common (even then) espérance. I would translate
“prévision” as “predicition” in English. I see that in the 1974
English translation of de Finetti’s "Teoria de la Probabilità”, the
translators note that they are using “prevision” (where earlier
translators had used “foresight”), thereby making “prevision” less
esoteric in English. However, in the same book, de Finetti makes a
big deal that the “prevision is not prediction” (in the English
translation). I would be interested if any Italian speakers out
there could explain how de Finetti described this in his native
language. I would render the French “prévision” as “predicition” in
English, so naively would think that “previsione” in Italian also
translates as “prediction”. Google Translate, however, gives me
“predizione”, for “predicition”. So when writing in Italian does de Finetti
contrast “previsione” from “predizione”? Here once can see the
difference between seeing and speaking, which is somewhat masked in
English. Is that what de Finetti was driving at?Interested in discussion.
Mik Bickis
On Jun 6, 2017, at 08:18 AM, Samuel Cohen <cohens(a)maths.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
Dear all,
If you are looking more generally at the history, it's unsurprising
the word 'gamble' wasn't used much before the mid-20th century.
While it was a common word in english since the 18th century (but
was a colloquialism), it seems to have moved up in popularity post
1900 (see for example google ngrams).De Moivre, in arguably the first textbook on probability in
English, uses 'wager' throughout (which is natural, as his
attention is on games of chance).Best, Sam Cohen
so On 06/06/17 14:01, Teddy Seidenfeld wrote:
Dear Mik, Erik, and Friends,
I'm no scholar of the term 'gamble', but it's been used by many
decision theorists in closely related senses.For instance, Savage's (1954) section 5.2 (titled 'Gambles') uses
it within his theory (of subjective expected utility) to refer to
the equivalence class of simple acts that carry the same
(personal) probability distribution over consequences. Savage is
generalizing the von Neumann-Morgenstern sense of 'gamble'.I grew up with the von Neumann-Morgenstern's theory of cardinal
utility for gambles -- though vN-M use an extraneous concept of
'probability' in contrast with Savage's approach.Best, Teddy
On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 7:12 PM, Professor Bickis
<bickis(a)snoopy.usask.ca> wrote: Hello:Can someone answer this question?
Was it Walley who initiated the word “gamble” to use in place of
the classical “random variable”? De Finetti uses “random
quantity”, as does Williams. “Gamble” is ubiquitous in the
current literature, but I have not seen it anywhere prior to
Walley’s 1991 book. Walley does not seem to attribute the term to anyone else.Mik Bickis
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