Intuitive statistics

Intuitive statistics, or folk statistics, is the cognitive phenomenon where organisms use data to make generalizations and predictions about the world. This can be a small amount of sample data or training instances, which in turn contribute to inductive inferences about either population-level properties, future data, or both. Inferences can involve revising hypotheses, or beliefs, in light of probabilistic data that inform and motivate future predictions. The informal tendency for cognitive animals to intuitively generate statistical inferences, when formalized with certain axioms of probability theory, constitutes statistics as an academic discipline. Because this capacity can accommodate a broad range of informational domains, the subject matter is similarly broad and overlaps substantially with other cognitive phenomena. Indeed, some have argued that "cognition as an intuitive statistician" is an apt companion metaphor to the computer metaphor of cognition. Others appeal to a variety of statistical and probabilistic mechanisms behind theory construction and category structuring. Research in this domain commonly focuses on generalizations relating to number, relative frequency, risk, and any systematic signatures in inferential capacity that an organism (e.g., humans, or non-human primates) might have. Intuitive inferences can involve generating hypotheses from incoming sense data, such as categorization and concept structuring. Data are typically probabilistic and uncertainty is the rule, rather than the exception, in learning, perception, language, and thought. Recently, researchers have drawn from ideas in probability theory, philosophy of mind, computer science, and psychology to model cognition as a predictive and generative system of probabilistic representations, allowing information structures to support multiple inferences in a variety of contexts and combinations. This approach has been called a probabilistic language of thought because it constructs representations probabilistically, from pre-existing concepts to predict a possible and likely state of the world.