XAT 2014 — VARC Question 19
Analyze the following passage and provide appropriate answers for the questions that follow.
Ideas involving the theory probability play a decisive part in modern physics. Yet we will still lack a satisfactory, consistence definition of probability; or, what amounts to much the same, we still lack a satisfactory axiomatic system for the calculus of probability. The relations between probability and experience are also still in need of clarification. In investigating this problem we shall discover what will at first seem an almost insuperable objection to my methodological views. For although probability statements play such a vitally important role in empirical science, they turn out to be in principle impervious to strict falsification. Yet this very stumbling block will become a touchstone upon which to test my theory, in order to find out what it is worth. Thus, we are confronted with two tasks. The first is to provide new foundations for the calculus of probability. This I shall try to do by developing the theory of probability as a frequency theory, along the lines followed by Richard von Mises, But without the use of what he calls the ‘axiom of convergence’ (or ‘limit axiom’) and with a somewhat weakened ‘axiom of randomness’ The second task is to elucidate the relations between probability and experience. This means solving what I call the problem of decidability statements. My hope is that the investigations will help to relieve the present unsatisfactory situation in which physicists make much use of probabilities without being able to say, consistently, what they mean by ‘probability’.
Which one of the following statements can be inferred from the passage?
Answer & solution
- A
Physics is the only subject than borrows form the theory.
- B
Physics is the only subject where the theory of probability is inaccurately applied.
- C
The theory of probability may be inaccurately applied in other subjects.
Physics is highly mathematical.
- E
Experience relates to physical objects only.
Option 1 implies that no subject borrows from the theory of probability other than Physics, which is not supported by the passage.
Options 2 and 3 can be eliminated since the passage does not so much deal with 'inaccurate application' as much as it deals with the absence of an exact definition of probability and the relation between probability and experience.
Option 4 can be inferred from the lines "physicists make much use of ... mean by 'probability'."
Option 5 can be eliminated since there is no mention of "physical objects" in the passage at all.
Hence, the correct answer is option 4.