Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Doctrine of Chances

  • Thomas Bayes and Bayes’ Theorem in medicine

    Geoffrey BairdSeattle, Washington, United States Medical nomenclature is often ridiculous. One professor in my medical school used to say of misnomers in medicine that they were like the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor much of an empire. So goes the medical and mathematical principle of Bayes’ theorem. Thomas Bayes was…