Estimating the Probability of Events That have Never Occurred: When is Your Vote Decisive?
估计从未发生事件的概率:你的一票何时具有决定性?
Researchers sometimes argue that statisticians have little to contribute when few realizations of the process being estimated are observed. We show that this argument is incorrect even in the extreme situation of estimating the probabilities of events so rare that they have never occurred. We show how statistical forecasting models allow us to use empirical data to improve inferences about the probabilities of these events. Our application is estimating the probability that…