AI and cognitive psychology rant (was Re: BIG successes of Lisp...)

[Alex Martelli]

Stephen Horne wrote:

> On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 07:45:40 GMT, Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it>
> wrote:
> 
>>Personally, I first met Rev. Bayes in high school, together with the
>>rest of the foundations of elementary probability theory, but then I
>>did admittedly go to a particularly good high school; neither of my
>>kids got decent probability theory in high school, though both of
>>them met it in their first college year (in totally different fields,
>>neither of them connected with "AI" -- financial economics for my
>>son, telecom engineering for my daughter).
> 
> Sorry - missed this bit on the first read.
> 
> I never limited my education to what the school was willing to tell

Heh, me neither, of course.

> me, partly because having Asperger syndrome myself meant that the
> library was the best refuge from bullies during break times.

Not for me, as it was non-smoking and I started smoking very young;-).

But my house was always cluttered with books, anyway.  However,
interestingly enough, I had not met Bayes' theorem _by that name_,
only in the somewhat confusing presentation known as "restricted
choice" in bridge theory -- problem is, Borel et Cheron's "Theorie
Mathematique du Bridge" was out of print for years, until (I think)
Mona Lisa Press finally printed it again (in English translation --
the French original came out again a while later as a part of the
reprint of all of Borel's works, but always was much costlier), so
my high school got there first (when I was 16).  My kids' exposure
to probability theory was much earlier of course (since I taught
them bridge when they were toddlers, and Bayes' Theorem pretty
obviously goes with it).


> I figure I first encountered Bayes in the context of expert systems
> when I was about 14 or 15. I imagine that fits roughly into the high
> school junior category, but I'm not American so I don't know for sure.

I'm not American either -- I say "high school" to mean what in Italy
is known as a "Liceo" (roughly the same age range, 14-18).


Alex