Probability and Its Interpretation - Foundations of Humanities Analytics

Explore the foundations of probability theory and its interpretations in this 36-minute lecture from the Foundations & Applications of Humanities Analytics course. Delve into the history of probability, examine key concepts like probability functions and the frequency interpretation, and critically analyze the subjective interpretation and its associated problems. Gain valuable insights for applying probabilistic reasoning to digital humanities, cultural analytics, and text analysis projects. Learn how to extract meaningful content from digital sources and operationalize measurements in humanities research. This lecture, part of a comprehensive course supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, aims to empower humanities scholars with essential knowledge for computational text analysis and natural language processing.

Introduction
Probability
History of Probability
The Puzzle
The Problem
The Aim
Omega
Probability Function
Frequency Interpretation
Subjective Interpretation
Problems with Subjective Interpretation
Summary