In what sense is P(A/B) P(B) = P(A,B)? The relationship between distributional format and subjective probability estimates

Abstract

The elicitation of uncertainty is a topic of interest in a range of disciplines. The conversion of expert beliefs into probability distributions can play a role in assisting key decisions in industry. However, elicitation methods can be prone to bias. In this paper we investigate the effect of changing the presentation of stimulus information and question format on elicited judgments of marginal, conditional and joint probabilities. Participants taught a probability distribution in one structure were expected to have difficulty assessing the distribution in another structure. While this pattern was not found, it turned out that training participants on the more difficult task (learning from a conditional structure) improved overall performance.