From this month's Open Thread, Stirling Westrup asks:
I second the question. My own recommendations will be found in the comments.
From this month's Open Thread, Stirling Westrup asks:
I second the question. My own recommendations will be found in the comments.
I constantly buy textbooks and use them as bedtime reading. A wonderful way to pick up the fundamentals (or at least a superficial familiarity) with many subjects. However, just reading any textbook is unlikely to actually give a great insight into any field. Doing exercises, and in particular having a teacher or mentor point out what is important, is necessary for actually getting anywhere.
To add at least some thread-relevant material, I'd like to recommend Eliezer's web page "An Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning" at http://yudkowsky.net/bayes/bayes.html
I'm reading Piattelli Palmarini's "Inevitable Illusions" right now, but I'm not that impressed so far. Most of the contents seem to be familiar from this list.
There is much mention in this blog about Bayesian rationality, or the use of Bayes' methods in decision making. Now, I studied Bayes conditional probabilities in Statistics class in University many years ago, but my knowledge of the theory ends there. Can you recommend any good books on the subject?
In fact, do you folks have a recommended reading list (other than this blog, of course!) for those trying to identify and overcome their own biases?