James Orvis Berger is an American statistician best known for his work on Bayesian statistics and decision theory. He won the COPSS Presidents' Award, one of the two highest awards in statistics, in 1985 at the age of 35. He received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell University in 1974. He was a faculty member in the Department of Statistics at Purdue University until 1997, at which time he moved to the Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University, where he is currently the Arts and Sciences Professor of Statistics. He was also director of the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute from 2002 to 2010, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago since 2011.
Berger at the Oberwolfach Research Institute for Mathematics in 2005
Decision theory is a branch of applied probability theory and analytic philosophy concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical consequences to the outcome.
The mythological judgement of Paris required selecting from three incomparable alternatives (the goddesses shown).
Military planners often conduct extensive simulations to help predict the decision-making of relevant actors.
The gambler's fallacy: even when the roulette ball repeatedly lands on red, it is no more likely to land on black the next time.
