Blueberry comments on Bayes' Theorem Illustrated (My Way) - Less Wrong

126 Post author: komponisto 03 June 2010 04:40AM

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Comment author: XiXiDu 06 June 2010 09:56:37AM *  2 points [-]

Yesterday, when falling asleep, I remembered that I indeed used the word 'obvious' in what I wrote. Forgot about it, I wrote the plain-English explanation from above earlier in a comment to the article 'Pigeons outperform humans at the Monty Hall Dilemma' and just copied it from there.

Anyway, I doubt it is obvious to anyone the first time. At least anyone who isn't a trained Bayesian. But for me it was enough to read some plain-English (German actually) explanations about it to come to the conclusion that the right solution is obviously right and now also intuitively so.

Maybe the problem is also that most people are simply skeptical to accept a given result. That is, is it really obvious to me now or have I just accepted that it is the right solution, repeated many times to become intuitively fixed? Is 1 + 1 = 2 really obvious? The last page of Russel and Whitehead's proof that 1+1=2 could be found on page 378 of the Principia Mathematica. So is it really obvious or have we simply all, collectively, come to accept this 'axiom' to be right and true?

I haven't had much time lately to get much further with my studies, I'm still struggling with basic Algebra. I have almost no formal education and try to educate myself now. That said, I started to watch a video series lately (The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See) and was struck when he said that to roughly figure out the doubling time you simply divide 70 by the percentage growth rate. I went to check it myself if it works and later looked it up. Well, it's NOT obvious why this is the case, at least not for me. Not even now that I have read up on the mathematical strict formula. But I'm sure, as I will think about it more, read more proofs and work with it, I'll come to regard it as obviously right. But will it be any more obvious than before? I will simply have collected some evidence for its truth value and its consistency. Things just start to make sense, or we think so because they work and/or are consistent.

Comment author: Blueberry 06 June 2010 05:44:54PM 2 points [-]

But I'm sure, as I will think about it more, read more proofs and work with it, I'll come to regard it as obviously right. But will it be any more obvious than before?

If you're interested, here is a good explanation of the derivation of the formula. I don't think it's obvious, any more than the quadratic formula is obvious: it's just one of those mathematical tricks that you learn and becomes second nature.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 06 June 2010 05:53:45PM *  0 points [-]

I'm not sure I'm completely happy with that explanation. They use the result that ln(1+x) is very close to x when x is small. This is due to the Taylor series expansion of ln(1+x) (edit:or simply on looking at the ratio of the two and using L'Hospital's rule), but if one hasn't had calculus, that claim is going to look like magic.