History
John Venn stated in 1876 that "every single thing or event has an indefinite number of properties or attributes observable in it, and might therefore be considered as belonging to an indefinite number of different classes of things", leading to problems with how to assign probabilities to a single case. He used as an example the probability that John Smith, a consumptive Englishman aged fifty, will live to sixty-one.
The name "problem of the reference class" was given by Hans Reichenbach, who wrote, "If we are asked to find the probability holding for an individual future event, we must first incorporate the event into a suitable reference class. An individual thing or event may be incorporated in many reference classes, from which different probabilities will result."
There has also been discussion of the reference class problem in philosophy.
Read more about this topic: Reference Class Problem
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