The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant f

A New York Times Book Review Editors Choice: A vivid account of the generationslong dispute over Bayes rule, one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of applied mathematics and statisticsAn intellectual romp touching on, among other topics, military ingenuity, the origins of modern epidemiology, and the theological foundation of modern mathematics.Michael Washburn, Boston GlobeTo have crafted a pageturner out of the history of statistics is an impressive feat. If only lectures at university had been this racy.David Robson, New ScientistBayes rule appears to be a straightforward, oneline theorem: by updating our initial beliefs with objective new information, we get a new and improved belief. To its adherents, it is an elegant statement about learning from experience. To its opponents, it is subjectivity run amok.In the firstever account of Bayes rule for general readers, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne explores this controversial theorem and the human obsessions surrounding it. She traces its discovery by an amateur mathematician in the 1740s through its development into roughly its modern form by French scientist Pierre Simon Laplace. She reveals why respected statisticians rendered it professionally taboo for 150 yearsat the same time that practitioners relied on it to solve crises involving great uncertainty and scanty information (Alan Turings role in breaking Germanys Enigma code during World War II), and explains how the advent of offtheshelf computer technology in the 1980s proved to be a gamechanger. Today, Bayes rule is used everywhere from DNA decoding to Homeland Security.Drawing on primary source material and interviews with statisticians and other scientists, The Theory That Would Not Die is the riveting account of how a seemingly simple theorem ignited one of the greatest controversies of all time.