A statistical analysis of the two-slit experiment: Or some remarks on quantum probability (Q1325679): Difference between revisions

At the beginning the author makes clear that his work is not intended to show that there is something wrong in quantum mechanics. He wants merely emphasize that the probabilistic notions used in quantum mechanics deserve, from a foundational point of view, a more accurate study than what has been devoted to them. Vain made clear the author says, that since the twenties the notion of probability has assumed a central role in quantum mechanics. He is convinced that the early use of this notion was ambiguous. The author recalls that whilst for Reichenbach quantum mechancis does not make use of a special theory of probability, this is not the case for Feynman. In fact, for this author the probability of Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Dirac and Born is not that of Bernoulli, Bayes, Laplace and Gauss. For the author of the present paper, Feynman is right in maintaining that with quantum mechanics something new has been introduced into the theory of classical probability, but he thinks that the novelty is more related to an enlargement of this theory than to its falsification. In order to show this, he analyses the two-slit experiment from the point of view of inferential statistics. Concluding this analysis, the author expresses the conviction that there is only one notion of probability applicable both to the macroscopic and the microscopic world. In his opinion, this means that the difference between classical and quantum probability stems from a lot of new probability rules discovered by physicists during the study of elementary particles. For the author this is due to the fact that in quantum mechanics the notion of probability was used in a new sphere. This allowed the discovery of a number of new statistical methods related to stochastic dependence. The author maintains that contrary to what happened in other similar cases, this fact has not yet been recognized by the scientific community whose members prefer to refer to a new concept, i.e. quantum probability.