I'm trying to understand what 'Bayesian' analysis of probability is. It's been explained to me in conversation several times, and I've just read an explanation of it in a book on probability ("Chances Are"), but none of these has resulted in any learning or understanding on my part. Of course this is an excellent illustration of what I'm always saying from my perspective as a teacher - if you don't actively work with the concepts you won't learn them.
Part of the problem is that, although explanations start out in plain English and simple arithmetic, they soon lapse into statistical symbols and equations where everything is prefaced by 'P', causing my reading style to switch into 'skip over this dreary bit' mode.
I do think it's probably important that I gain some understanding of this new Bayesian stuff, because it appears to be very popular among people who know what they're doing with probabilities. So trying to explain it in the blog is a way to force myself to figure it out.
Now I'm reading an on-line 'intuitive' explanation by Eliezer Yudlowsky. He emphasizes intuitive and visual explanations (and how the way that a problem is presented affects our ability to understand it), and so far it makes sense. He also has interactive applets where the reader can change the proportions and probabilities - another way to minimize passive reading.
So far I'm about 40% through his long web page, and I'm not sure I've learned anything yet. Maybe tomorrow.
- Home
- Angry by Choice
- Catalogue of Organisms
- Chinleana
- Doc Madhattan
- Games with Words
- Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
- History of Geology
- Moss Plants and More
- Pleiotropy
- Plektix
- RRResearch
- Skeptic Wonder
- The Culture of Chemistry
- The Curious Wavefunction
- The Phytophactor
- The View from a Microbiologist
- Variety of Life
Field of Science
-
-
-
Political pollsters are pretending they know what's happening. They don't.5 weeks ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
-
-
Course Corrections6 months ago in Angry by Choice
-
-
The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site2 years ago in Catalogue of Organisms
-
The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site2 years ago in Variety of Life
-
Does mathematics carry human biases?4 years ago in PLEKTIX
-
-
-
-
A New Placodont from the Late Triassic of China5 years ago in Chinleana
-
Posted: July 22, 2018 at 03:03PM6 years ago in Field Notes
-
Bryophyte Herbarium Survey7 years ago in Moss Plants and More
-
Harnessing innate immunity to cure HIV8 years ago in Rule of 6ix
-
WE MOVED!8 years ago in Games with Words
-
-
-
-
post doc job opportunity on ribosome biochemistry!9 years ago in Protein Evolution and Other Musings
-
Growing the kidney: re-blogged from Science Bitez9 years ago in The View from a Microbiologist
-
Blogging Microbes- Communicating Microbiology to Netizens10 years ago in Memoirs of a Defective Brain
-
-
-
The Lure of the Obscure? Guest Post by Frank Stahl12 years ago in Sex, Genes & Evolution
-
-
Lab Rat Moving House13 years ago in Life of a Lab Rat
-
Goodbye FoS, thanks for all the laughs13 years ago in Disease Prone
-
-
Slideshow of NASA's Stardust-NExT Mission Comet Tempel 1 Flyby13 years ago in The Large Picture Blog
-
in The Biology Files
Not your typical science blog, but an 'open science' research blog. Watch me fumbling my way towards understanding how and why bacteria take up DNA, and getting distracted by other cool questions.
Trying to understand Bayesian reasoning about probabilities
1 comment:
Markup Key:
- <b>bold</b> = bold
- <i>italic</i> = italic
- <a href="http://www.fieldofscience.com/">FoS</a> = FoS
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete