An Analysis of Jerzy Neyman’s Imaginary, Non Existent , Principle of Indifference, Urn Ball Example supposedly taken from J M Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability(1921)

Abstract

Jerzy Neyman analyzed an imaginary, non existent, Urn ball problem that he thought was taken from J M Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability in his Lectures and Conferences on Mathematical Statistics and Probability (1952). Neyman apparently never read the book for himself. He apparently relied on some, other, unknown source to provide him with the problem that he thought came from J M Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability.

The problem can be analyzed based on an “as if” approach to discover if Neyman realized that Keynes’s Principle of Indifference is a substantially different technique from Laplace’s concoction that, when applied, will lead to substantially different answers from those obtained by the use of Laplace’s Principle of Non –Sufficient Knowledge.