Emile comments on A Fervent Defense of Frequentist Statistics - Less Wrong

43 Post author: jsteinhardt 18 February 2014 08:08PM

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Comment author: Emile 14 February 2014 01:44:33PM 1 point [-]

Do you have a handy example of a frequentist algorithm that works, for which there is no Bayesian explanation?

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 14 February 2014 01:54:05PM *  10 points [-]

I wouldn't say "no Bayesian explanation," but perhaps "a Bayesian explanation is unknown to me, nor do I see how this explanation would illuminate anything." But yes, I gave an example elsewhere in this thread. The FCI algorithm for learning graph structure in the non-parametric setting with continuous valued variables, where the correct underlying model has the following independence structure:

A is independent of B and C is independent of D (and nothing else is true).

Since I (and to my knowledge everyone else) do not know how to write the likelihood for this model, I don't know how to set up the standard Bayesian story here.