Think Bayes: Bayesian Statistics Made Simple (2012)

Post by taserian » Mon, Nov 20, 2017, 9:57 PM UTC

WhitneyLand wrote: post #28

boostedsignal wrote: post #6

For those unclear on the concrete (rather than philosophical) difference between Bayesian and frequentist statistics in the first place, I hope it's not inappropriate for me to share this 5-minute example that I wrote a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11096129

I hope people agree it’s totally appropriate, and appreciated, thank you for reposting it. This is most of the reason I come here, because people show the good will to share bits of knowledge and experience. Then a whole other benefit, is that when people are willing to do this, their contribution might be critiqued or corrected, which can then sharpen or polish your knowledge and thinking even in areas where you mig…

Post by srean » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 5:04 AM UTC

bubblesocks wrote: post #35

appleiigs wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't downvote. The author points out his differences and provides his reasons why. The criticism doesn't add any value to the conversation because it has been addressed already by the author himself.

I disagree. In Python, the PEP8 standard is to use snake case for variables and function names. Classes should appear in this format: ClassName. Downey uses the class style for functions because, according to him, he feels it would be too inconvenient to do it the right way. This is a lazy cop-out. If you're writing a book targeting the Python community you should adhere to the Python PEP8 standards out of respect fo…

Post by wodenokoto » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 1:27 PM UTC

justinpombrio wrote: post #40

wodenokoto wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You write that the frequentist doesn't answer the question, but it does. It answers P(H') = (H/H+T)^H' You also write that the frequentist solution fails to give an error estimate, yet you don't show that the Bayesian solution does give one. If the goal of the article is to show that Bayesian is more correct than frequentist then it leaves the reader unconvinced. If the goal is to show 3 ways of finding a probability…

> You write that the frequentist doesn't answer the question, but it does. It answers > P(H') = (H/H+T)^H' That's not the probability of getting H' heads in a row. It's an estimate of the probability of getting H' heads in a row based on a Maximum Likelihood estimation. It doesn't make much sense if you take it to be the probability of getting H' heads in a row. For example, if {H=1, T=0}, then P(H'=100) = 1. You loo…