Physics And Probability

This textbook presents an introduction to the use of probability in physics, treating introductory ideas of both statistical physics and of statistical inference, as well the importance of probability in information theory, quantum mechanics, and stochastic processes, in a unified manner. The book also presents a harmonised view of frequentist and Bayesian approaches to inference, emphasising their complementary value. The aim is to steer a middle course between the "cookbook" style and an overly dry mathematical statistics style. The treatment is driven by real physics examples throughout, but developed with a level of mathematical clarity and rigour appropriate to mid-career physics undergraduates. Exercises and solutions are included.

What is the role and meaning of probability in physical theory, in particular in two of the most successful theories of our age, quantum physics and statistical mechanics? Laws once conceived as universal and deterministic, such as Newton‘s laws of motion, or the second law of thermodynamics, are replaced in these theories by inherently probabilistic laws. This collection of essays by some of the world‘s foremost experts presents an in-depth analysis of the meaning of probability in contemporary physics. Among the questions addressed are: How are probabilities defined? Are they objective or subjective? What is their explanatory value? What are the differences between quantum and classical probabilities? The result is an informative and thought-provoking book for the scientifically inquisitive.

This book is designed as a practical and intuitive introduction to probability, statistics and random quantities for physicists. The book aims at getting to the main points by a clear, hands-on exposition supported by well-illustrated and worked-out examples. A strong focus on applications in physics and other natural sciences is maintained throughout. In addition to basic concepts of random variables, distributions, expected values and statistics, the book discusses the notions of entropy, Markov processes, and fundamentals of random number generation and Monte-Carlo methods.

This book comprehensively presents the basic concepts of probability and Bayesian inference with sufficient generality to make them applicable to current problems in scientific research. The first chapter provides the fundamentals of probability theory that are essential for the analysis of random phenomena. The second chapter includes a full and pragmatic review of the Bayesian methods that constitute a natural and coherent framework with enough freedom to analyze all the information available from experimental data in a conceptually simple manner. The third chapter presents the basic Monte Carlo techniques used in scientific research, allowing a large variety of problems to be handled difficult to tackle by other procedures. The author also introduces a basic algorithm, which enables readers to simulate samples from simple distribution, and describes useful cases for researchers in particle physics.The final chapter is devoted to the basic ideas of Information Theory, which are important in the Bayesian methodology. This highly readable book is appropriate for graduate-level courses, while at the same time being useful for scientific researches in general and for physicists in particular since most of the examples are from the field of Particle Physics.

A practical introduction to the use of probability and statistics in experimental physics for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Intended as a practical guide, and not as a comprehensive text, the emphasis is on applications and understanding, on theorems and techniques that are actually used in experimental physics. Proofs of theorems are generally omitted unless they contribute to the intuition in understanding and applying the theorem. The problems, many with worked solutions, introduce the student to the use of computers; occasional reference is made to some of the Fortran routines available in the CERN library, but other systems, such as Maple, will also be useful.

The first six chapters of this volume present the author's 'predictive' or information theoretic' approach to statistical mechanics, in which the basic probability distributions over microstates are obtained as distributions of maximum entropy (Le. , as distributions that are most non-committal with regard to missing information among all those satisfying the macroscopically given constraints). There is then no need to make additional assumptions of ergodicity or metric transitivity; the theory proceeds entirely by inference from macroscopic measurements and the underlying dynamical assumptions. Moreover, the method of maximizing the entropy is completely general and applies, in particular, to irreversible processes as well as to reversible ones. The next three chapters provide a broader framework - at once Bayesian and objective - for maximum entropy inference. The basic principles of inference, including the usual axioms of probability, are seen to rest on nothing more than requirements of consistency, above all, the requirement that in two problems where we have the same information we must assign the same probabilities. Thus, statistical mechanics is viewed as a branch of a general theory of inference, and the latter as an extension of the ordinary logic of consistency. Those who are familiar with the literature of statistics and statistical mechanics will recognize in both of these steps a genuine 'scientific revolution' - a complete reversal of earlier conceptions - and one of no small significance.

This volume provides a philosophical appraisal of probabilities in all of physics. It makes sense of probabilistic statements as they occur in the various physical theories and models and presents a plausible epistemology and metaphysics of probabilities.

In this book the author charts the history and development of modern probability theory.