Ruma Falk
Israeli psychologist and philosopher of mathematics (1932–2020)
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Ruma Falk (Hebrew: רומה פלק, née Oren-Aharonovich,[1] 1932–2020) was an Israeli psychologist and philosopher of mathematics known for her work on probability theory and human understanding of probability and statistics.[2]
1932
Ruma Falk | |
|---|---|
רומה פלק | |
| Born | Oren-Aharonovich 1932 Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine |
| Died | August 15, 2020 (aged 87–88) |
| Alma mater | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| Known for | Probability theory, human understanding of probability and statistics |
| Awards | George Pólya Award (1984) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychology, Philosophy of Mathematics |
| Institutions | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| Doctoral advisor | Amos Tversky |
Falk was born in Jerusalem,[1][2] and educated at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium[2] and Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[1] She completed her PhD on the perception of chance at the Hebrew University in 1975 under the supervision of Amos Tversky,[2] and became a professor there.[1][3][2] She was married to Raphael Falk, a geneticist and historian of science.[3][2][4]
Falk won the George Pólya Award of the Mathematical Association of America with Maya Bar-Hillel in 1984 for their joint work on probability.[5] She died on August 15, 2020.[4]
Selected works
Falk was the author of books including:
- Understanding Probability and Statistics: A Book of Problems (A K Peters, 1993)[6]
- אתגרים לתאים האפורים (Challenges to the Gray Cells, Poalim Library Publishing, 2004)[7]
- יש בעיה! (There is a Problem, Poalim Library Publishing, 2013)[2]
- Many Faces of the Gambler's Fallacy: Subjective Randomness and Its Diverse Manifestations (self-published, 2016)
She also created a board game, ברירה וסיכוי (Choice and Chance).[2]
Her other publications include:
- Bar-Hillel, Maya; Falk, Ruma (March 1982), "Some teasers concerning conditional probabilities", Cognition, 11 (2): 109–122, doi:10.1016/0010-0277(82)90021-x, PMID 7198956, S2CID 44509163
- Falk, Ruma; Bar-Hillel, Maya (June 1983), "Probabilistic dependence between events", The Two-Year College Mathematics Journal, 14 (3): 240–247, doi:10.2307/3027094, JSTOR 3027094
- Falk, Ruma; Greenbaum, Charles W. (February 1995), "Significance tests die hard", Theory & Psychology, 5 (1): 75–98, doi:10.1177/0959354395051004, S2CID 143583538
- Falk, Ruma; Konold, Clifford (1997), "Making sense of randomness: Implicit encoding as a basis for judgment.", Psychological Review, 104 (2): 301–318, doi:10.1037/0033-295x.104.2.301