Presenter:  Thomas Griffiths
Presentation type:  Symposium
Presentation date/time:  7/26  9:50-10:15
 
Monte Carlo and the Mind
 
Thomas Griffiths, University of California, Berkeley
 
(Note that this is part of the Modern Monte Carlo Methods invited symposium) Probability theory can be used in analyzing human cognition in two ways: as a hypothesis about how people represent degrees of belief and make inferences from data, or as part of statistical models that are used for data analysis. Both of these uses are relatively common, and methods for working with probability distributions are relevant to both. However, Monte Carlo methods are more commonly used in data analysis than as part of theories of cognition. I will talk about two ways that Monte Carlo methods connect to the mind: as methods for gathering information about subjective probability distributions, and as hypotheses about mechanisms that minds might use for simplifying the complex and computationally demanding task of performing probabilistic inference.