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Equation 6 · Part 9 · Ecological Rationality: When Biases Are Adaptations

Numerator: P(D mid 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 H)

What this part means

The complete quantity above the fraction bar.

Its job in the formula

P(D mid H) occurs above the fraction bar. The numerator is divided by the entire denominator below it.

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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