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Bayesian stats book banned in China

stat.columbia.edu

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Re: Bayesian stats book banned in China

#4
Strange that it was banned. Maybe it had to do with the vignettes---some of the examples are from political science (e.g., election results, polling) and another deals with arsenic in drinking water...or maybe Hu Jintao feels the way to deal with hierarchal data is to cluster standard errors.

Re: Bayesian stats book banned in China

#8
post #3

Is there any way to find out the specific reason the book was not allowed to be published?

Probably because they're using Bayesian filters on various security fronts: internal threat analysis, the great firewall, whatever side projects some bureaucrat is using to pad his income.

This is a problem with classification/censorship schemes: the censors/classifiers are all stove-piped, so their decisions come with a high degree of variability. The censor may well have been unaware that this is a whole field of work, or, is aware, but isn't responsible for the censoring decisions about all other related titles.

Re: Bayesian stats book banned in China

#9
post #6
post #3

Is there any way to find out the specific reason the book was not allowed to be published?

The author doesn't know, but he hypothesizes that it's because "the idea of prior distribution [is] contrary to Communism".

Which seems more than a little ridiculous to me, but ... it is China.
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