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Bayesian stats book banned in China

stat.columbia.edu

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Re: Bayesian stats book banned in China

#31

Post by lightoverhead »

gort wrote: post #29
lightoverhead wrote: post #26

Hi Guys, I am from China, and of course the Bayesian is taught in China. Only in the culture revolution time, this crazy thing may happen; but it's long time ago when Mao was alive. Now China is a modern society; of course, the Bayesian theory is taught in schools; otherwise how could they send the spaceship to the outer space and have the fastest super computer in the world so far. you are smart hackers, not a bunch…

of course, the Bayesian theory is taught in schools; otherwise how could they send the spaceship to the outer space and have the fastest super computer in the world Do these things require specifically Bayesian statistics?

what do you think?

Re: Bayesian stats book banned in China

#32

Post by alextp »

mayank wrote: post #11
[deleted] wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I would seriously doubt this is the reason. If you want to learn applied Bayesian stats, you go to a machine learning or game theory conference or read research papers. There are plenty of Chinese citizens doing both, including low-level university students, so this really can't be the reason. I would think that the reason has something to do with objectionable content inside this specific book, perhaps in an example…

Actually, one of the best ways to learn applied bayesian stats, used by most machine learning researchers I've asked about this, is to read Gelman's books on bayesian data analysis and hierarchical/multilevel modeling.

Re: Bayesian stats book banned in China

#33

Post by gort »

lightoverhead wrote: post #31
gort wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

of course, the Bayesian theory is taught in schools; otherwise how could they send the spaceship to the outer space and have the fastest super computer in the world Do these things require specifically Bayesian statistics?

what do you think?

I think it's not immediately obvious why they would.

Re: Bayesian stats book banned in China

#34

Post by lightoverhead »

gort wrote: post #33
lightoverhead wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do you think?

I think it's not immediately obvious why they would.

I agree, it's not immediate application. But Bayesian is one of the most important or fundamental knowledge to develop these cutting-edge technologies.

Re: Bayesian stats book banned in China

#35

Post by mayank »

lightoverhead wrote: post #26

Hi Guys, I am from China, and of course the Bayesian is taught in China. Only in the culture revolution time, this crazy thing may happen; but it's long time ago when Mao was alive. Now China is a modern society; of course, the Bayesian theory is taught in schools; otherwise how could they send the spaceship to the outer space and have the fastest super computer in the world so far. you are smart hackers, not a bunch…

Launching a spaceship almost certainly uses Bayesian methods for tracking (e.g., Kalman or particle filters for position tracking), but I seriously doubt that building a supercomputer requires a dedicated use of Bayesian statistics.

On a different note, perhaps you could be slightly less condescending in your future posts.

Re: Bayesian stats book banned in China

#36

Post by garply »

gort wrote: post #29
lightoverhead wrote: post #26

Hi Guys, I am from China, and of course the Bayesian is taught in China. Only in the culture revolution time, this crazy thing may happen; but it's long time ago when Mao was alive. Now China is a modern society; of course, the Bayesian theory is taught in schools; otherwise how could they send the spaceship to the outer space and have the fastest super computer in the world so far. you are smart hackers, not a bunch…

of course, the Bayesian theory is taught in schools; otherwise how could they send the spaceship to the outer space and have the fastest super computer in the world Do these things require specifically Bayesian statistics?

From a strictly logical perspective, they might not. But I would wager a fair amount that there are Bayesian methods used somewhere in the stack supporting those two things. I also suspect that genetic algorithms designed for scheduling purposes probably help your phone call data get transferred somewhere along the way. That is to say, just because the two technologies are not obviously connected doesn't mean the former isn't used somewhere to achieve or improve the latter.

That said, even if there is no presence of Bayesianism in the efforts producing those tasks, his point was surely that, in today's world, an education sufficiently advanced to train people to do those things would certainly include Bayesian statistics somewhere in the curriculum.

Re: Bayesian stats book banned in China

#37

Post by mayank »

Symmetry wrote: post #30
mayank wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they try to ban Chinese citizens from international conferences and journals in anything related to Bayesian methods, I can tell you firsthand that a lot of math/CS/ML/AI conferences will shrivel up quite a bit. They won't die, but it'll be like the Cold War, where Russian mathematicians made advances that were insulated from the west for many years, and vice versa. A net loss for everyone, especially in a topic a…

You misunderstand, I'm very much not saying that there is or will be a general policy of banning things related to Bayesian methods. Rather, thats its quite possible one mid-level bureaucrat thought that Bayesian methods were unacceptable in this one instance. Maybe he (I think "he" is a safe assumption here) was confused and really thought that this sort of math was subversive. Maybe he was worried that he hadn't ba…

Ah, point taken.

Re: Bayesian stats book banned in China

#38

Post by andybak »

mayank wrote: post #35
lightoverhead wrote: post #26

Hi Guys, I am from China, and of course the Bayesian is taught in China. Only in the culture revolution time, this crazy thing may happen; but it's long time ago when Mao was alive. Now China is a modern society; of course, the Bayesian theory is taught in schools; otherwise how could they send the spaceship to the outer space and have the fastest super computer in the world so far. you are smart hackers, not a bunch…

Launching a spaceship almost certainly uses Bayesian methods for tracking (e.g., Kalman or particle filters for position tracking), but I seriously doubt that building a supercomputer requires a dedicated use of Bayesian statistics. On a different note, perhaps you could be slightly less condescending in your future posts.

I didn't find his tone too objectionable. Always consider that getting the tone correct can be difficult in a foreign tongue.

Re: Bayesian stats book banned in China

#39

Post by lightoverhead »

garply wrote: post #36
gort wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

of course, the Bayesian theory is taught in schools; otherwise how could they send the spaceship to the outer space and have the fastest super computer in the world Do these things require specifically Bayesian statistics?

From a strictly logical perspective, they might not. But I would wager a fair amount that there are Bayesian methods used somewhere in the stack supporting those two things. I also suspect that genetic algorithms designed for scheduling purposes probably help your phone call data get transferred somewhere along the way. That is to say, just because the two technologies are not obviously connected doesn't mean the for…

Thank you garply. "an education sufficiently advanced to train people to do those things would certainly include Bayesian statistics somewhere in the curriculum" is exactly what I want to convey.

Re: Bayesian stats book banned in China

#40

Post by bigfudge »

disponsible wrote: post #14
younata wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm pretty sure it has to do with the material of examples used in the book rather than with the actual theory.

Agreed. If it's Gelman many examples will be from elections, which in itself might be enough to give the communist party in china pause.
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