Probability theory - the logic of science

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Editor’s foreword
E. T. Jaynes died April 30, 1998. Before his death he asked me to finish and publish his
book on probability theory. I struggled with this for some time, because there is no doubt in
my mind that Jaynes wanted this book finished. Unfortunately, most of the later chapters,
Jaynes’ intended volume 2 on applications, were either missing or incomplete, and some
of the early chapters also had missing pieces. I could have written these latter chapters and
filled in the missing pieces, but if I did so, the work would no longer be Jaynes’; rather, it
would be a Jaynes–Bretthorst hybrid with no way to tell which material came from which
author. In the end, I decided the missing chapters would have to stay missing – the work
would remain Jaynes’.
There were a number of missing pieces of varying length that Jaynes had marked by
inserting the phrase ‘much more coming’. I could have left these comments in the
text, but they were ugly and they made the book look very incomplete. Jaynes intended
this book to serve as both a reference and a text book. Consequently, there are question
boxes (Exercises) scattered throughout most chapters. In the end, I decided to replace the
‘much more coming’ comments by introducing ‘Editor’s’ Exercises. If you answer these
questions, you will have filled in the missing material.
Jaynes wanted to include a series of computer programs that implemented some of the
calculations in the book. I had originally intended to include these programs. But, as time
went on, it became increasingly obvious that many of the programs were not available, and
the ones that were were written in a particularly obscure form of basic (it was the programs
that were obscure, not the basic). Consequently, I removed the references to these programs
and, where necessary, inserted a few sentences to direct people to the necessary software
tools to implement the calculations.
Numerous references were missing and had to be supplied. Usually the information
available, a last name and date, was sufficient to find one or more probable references. When
there were several good candidates, and I was unable to determine which Jaynes intended, I
included multiple references and modified the citation. Sometimes the information was so
vague that no good candidates were available. Fortunately, I was able to remove the citation
with no detrimental effect. To enable readers to distinguish between cited works and other
published sources, Jaynes’ original annotated bibliography has been split into two sections:
a Reference list and a Bibliography.

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