Legal Probabilism is the view that mathematics, and probability theory in particular, can be used to explicate the standard of legal decisions. While probabilistic tools are sometimes used in courtrooms, the construction of a general model of evidence evaluation remains a challenge. Conceptual difficulties facing Legal Probabilism include the difficulty about conjunction, the difficulty about corroboration and the gatecrasher paradox. These problems need to be addressed before we construct a general model. In this survey we discuss the three difficulties and present some theories proposed as their solutions.Małgorzata Stefaniak, Rafał Urbaniak

This paper revisits one of the most debated tales from the Old Testament, Jacob’s deception of his father Isaac, and models it in the framework of a Bayesian game. Solving for the equilibrium that occurs in the Torah reveals what conditions must hold for biblical characters to be willing to make the decisions that they make. The paper also examines how the protagonists’ decisions would have changed if they had held different values. The analysis sheds light on which interpretations of the biblical story hold the most weight when its characters maintain consistent beliefs and act upon them in a sequentially rational manner.

The article examines the decision-making components of Jane Austen’s six major novels as reconstructed in Michael Chwe’s book and his argument that Austen was a precursor of game theory. In her novels, Austen describes an abundance of strategic situations in the mating process within the British higher classes. Social constraints made mating within this world a tough game due to harsh punishments for failure, especially for women, and severe limitation on signaling interest or sympathy. Austen cleverly investigates this environment and reconstructs many aspects of strategic behavior that have their counterparts in formal concepts of game and decision theory. While she hasn’t made contributions to theory per se, she deserves being named a precursor of applied strategic thinking and an expert on a particular strategically sophisticated social environment.

We argue that rankings, as they are commonly used, can be, and perhaps are, misleading and potentially harmful.

With little extra effort, however, one can gain much more insight into relations among the objects ranked and, in the consequence, gain a better understanding of the ranking. The fundamental notion used to compare and evaluate rankings in our analysis is that of Pareto optymality. General claims are illustrated with the ranking of Polish universities published by Perspektywy monthly in 2016.

This note is based on results that are well known in the areas of multiobjective optimization and multiple-criteria decision analysis. The objective of the note is to point to the shortcomings and potential pitfalls behind the common use and understanding of rankings