Manfred comments on What Bayesianism taught me - Less Wrong

62 Post author: Tyrrell_McAllister 12 August 2013 06:59AM

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Comment author: Tenoke 11 August 2013 02:54:10PM *  2 points [-]

I have never been taught Bayes' theorem in statistics classes.

Comment author: Manfred 11 August 2013 07:23:24PM *  0 points [-]

And, presumably, you have taken an introductory statistics class? Hm. Probably in high school, and then in college (assuming you've been) you skipped the introductory class and took one with only T-tests etc. and no counting problems? Seems like the most likely way to miss learning Bayes' theorem and still make that statement.

Comment author: BerryPick6 12 August 2013 07:29:47PM 0 points [-]

Bayes' Theorem is taught in High-School here, at all levels of math.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 17 August 2013 05:55:10AM *  2 points [-]

Where is "here"? I didn't encounter Bayes' Rule in an academic setting until I took a finite maths class at university (in Arizona, US).

Edit: Well, actually I was recommended a book called Choice and Chance by Brian Skyrms by a philosophy professor which explicitly teaches it in the context of Bayesian epistemology, but that was the result of out-of-class conversation and was not related to any particular course I was taking. BTW, I whole-heartedly recommend the book as an introduction to inductive logic.

Comment author: BerryPick6 24 August 2013 05:10:21PM 1 point [-]

By "here," I meant Israel.

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 12 August 2013 02:58:48PM 0 points [-]

A data point from me as well:

At my university, I learned Bayes' theorem in both my Intro to Statistics class (there was a whole section on Bayesian probability), and in my AI class.

Comment author: somervta 11 August 2013 07:52:36PM *  0 points [-]

Data point - in my intro stats course (at college), 'Bayes Theorem' was never explicitly taught, but you get all the probability required and are given Bayes-like problems (that I explicitly used Bayes' to solve) - they just never put an intimidating theorem on the board.

This may or may not be standard in intro stats courses

Comment author: gwern 11 August 2013 08:50:16PM 0 points [-]

In the CMU OLI course on statistics, Bayes Theorem is presented late on in the course, very briefly, and as restricted to simple population sampling; it's very easy to see how someone taking it could forget about it the day after doing the problems.

Comment author: Tenoke 11 August 2013 07:45:26PM *  0 points [-]

I have had no choice over my classes and the statistics classes at university I had as a part of my program taught us from the very basics (and I've had 4 times more statistics classes than any other class as a part of my program except for research methods). I studied Psychology in the UK.