^[1]

The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly having communicated French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris.

What happened? In 1906 Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army. He served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

How did Dreyfus’s fortune change? Henri Poincare, a respected mathematician cited probability and statistics. He said that undue weightage to new evidence was incorrect and judgment should be made on basis of all other available proofs. He called on the jury to rely on scientific education rather than feelings.

It was much before probability that David Hume criticized against cause and effect. He said that certain objects are constantly associated with each other. But the fact that umbrellas and rain appear together does not mean that umbrellas cause rain. The fact that the sun has risen thousands of times does not guarantee that it will do so the next day. In criticizing concepts about cause and effect Hume was undermining Christianity’s core beliefs.

With Hume’s doubts about cause and effect swirling about, Thomas Bayes began to consider ways to treat the issue mathematically. In any event, problems involving cause and effect and uncertainty filled the air, and Bayes set out to deal with them quantitatively….

To read the complete article visit Business Standard. ^[2]