Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
That's one way of phrasing it, and unfortunately some jurisdictions have adopted that phrase, but it is not correct.

A preponderance of the evidence is the greater weight of the evidence after all evidence is considered. Heuristics along the lines of "yeah that fits my priors"—which is what is actually meant by "more likely than not"—are explicitly disallowed.

If Joe Smith in Smalltown, Ohio was hit by a blue bus, and hammock owns 51 of the 100 blue buses in Smalltown whereas torstenvl owns 49 of the 100 blue buses, that is insufficient evidence by itself to prevail by a preponderance standard against hammock in a civil suit.

Thank you for correcting me, and great example