Below is the abstract of a forthcoming target article on: THE BASE RATE FALLACY RECONSIDERED by Jonathan J. Koehler This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be current BBS Associates or nominated by a current BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please send email to: bbs(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk or write to: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection by anonymous ftp (or gopher or world-wide-web) according to the instructions that follow after the abstract. ____________________________________________________________________ THE BASE RATE FALLACY RECONSIDERED: DESCRIPTIVE, NORMATIVE AND METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES Jonathan J. Koehler Department of Managemant Science and Information Systems University of Texas at Austin Behavioral Decision Making Faculty Austin, Texas 78712-1175 koehler(a)mail.utexas.edu ABSTRACT: We have been oversold on the base rate fallacy in probabilistic judgment from an empirical, normative, and methodological standpoint. First, contrary to the conventional wisdom, a thorough examination of the literature reveals that base rates are almost always used and that their degree of use depends on task structure and internal task representation. Second, few tasks map unambiguously into the simple, narrow framework that is held up as the standard of good decision making. Third, the current approach is criticized for its failure to consider how the ambiguous, unreliable and unstable base rates of the real world should be used in the informationally rich and criterion-complex natural environment. A more ecologically valid research program is called for. -------------------------------------------------------------- To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable by anonymous ftp from ftp.princeton.edu according to the instructions below (the filename is bbs.koehler). Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. ------------------------------------------------------------- To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either: ftp princeton.edu or ftp 128.112.128.1 When you are asked for your login, type: anonymous Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid: yourlogin(a)yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@") cd /pub/harnad/BBS To show the available files, type: ls Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example): get bbs.koehler When you have the file(s) you want, type: quit These files are also on the World Wide Web and retrievable with Netscape, Mosaic, gopher, archie, veronica, etc. The URLs are: http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/bbs.html gopher://gopher.princeton.edu/11/.libraries/.pujournals ftp//ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.koehler ---------- Where the above procedure is not available there are two fileservers: ftpmail(a)decwrl.dec.com and bitftp(a)pucc.bitnet that will do the transfer for you. To one or the other of them, send the following one line message: help for instructions (which will be similar to the above, but will be in the form of a series of lines in an email message that ftpmail or bitftp will then execute for you). -------------------------------------------------------------