Rationality Quotes June 2012

OpenThreadGuy

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Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Honestly, I think PT:TLoS is probably best for those who already understand Bayesian statistics to a fair degree (and remember their calculus). I'm currently inching my way through Sivia's 2006 Data Analysis: A Bayesian Tutorial and hoping I'll do better with that than Jaynes.

I think PT:TLoS is probably best for those who understand frequentist statistics to a fair degree. He spends a whole load of the book arguing against them, so it helps to know what he's talking about (contrary to his recommendation that knowing no frequentist statistics will help). The Bayesian stuff he builds from the ground up, calculus is all that's needed to follow it.

4Karmakaiser14y

Jaynes begins it with a caution that this is an upper undergrad to graduate level text, not knowing a great deal of probability in the first place, I stopped reading and picked up a more elementary text. What do you think are the core pre-reqs to reading Jaynes?

4khafra14y

I'd agree, with the exception that chapters one and five (and maybe other sections) are great for just about anybody to get a qualitative understanding of Jaynes-style bayesian epistemology.