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Equation 6 · Part 10 · Ecological Rationality: When Biases Are Adaptations

Denominator: P(D mid lnot H)

P(D∣H)P(D∣¬H)  >  P(¬H)P(H)⋅cfacmiss\frac{P(D \mid H)}{P(D \mid \lnot H)} \; > \; \frac{P(\lnot H)}{P(H)} \cdot \frac{c_{fa}}{c_{miss}}
P(D∣¬H)P(D \mid \lnot H)

What this part means

The complete quantity below the fraction bar; it must be nonzero for this division.

Its job in the formula

P(D mid lnot H) occurs below the fraction bar. The quantity above the bar is divided by this expression; zero is excluded as a denominator.

The passage around this formula

This is a rule about optimal thresholds, not merely an intuition, and it has a compact formal statement. A decision-maker observes ambiguous evidence D bearing on whether a state H holds — a predator is present, a partner is unfaithful, an approach signals romantic interest — against the alternative that it does not. Where cfac_{fa} is the fitness cost of a false alarm and cmissc_{miss} is the fitness cost of a miss, the threshold that minimizes total expected fitness cost is to infer H whenever: P(D∣H)P(D∣¬H)  >  P(¬H)P(H)⋅cfacmiss\frac{P(D \mid H)}{P(D \mid \lnot H)} \; > \; \frac{P(\lnot H)}{P(H)} \cdot \frac{c_{fa}}{c_{miss}}. When the two error costs are equal, the cost ratio on the right collapses to one, and the rule reduces to the ordinary Bayesian classifier that a norm blind to consequences would…

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Learn the underlying idea

A fraction a/b means a divided by b. The top number is the numerator; the bottom number is the denominator, and it cannot be zero.

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Sources cited in the surrounding passage

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