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Cyan comments on Probability updating question - 99.9999% chance of tails, heads on first flip - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: nuckingfutz 16 May 2011 12:58AM

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Comment author: Cyan 16 May 2011 02:36:54AM *  1 point [-]

I had in mind something like a mixture prior with 0.99*Beta(0,1) + 0.01*Beta(0.5,0.5). Yes, the Beta(0,1) component makes the prior improper. Once heads is observed the Beta(0,1) component is updated to Beta(1,1) and its mixture weight is also updated and basically becomes negligible such that the component effectively drops out of the mixture.

I'm treating the behavior of the above distribution as a guide for my intuition as to what will happen to the mixture weight when there is no Beta(0,1) but rather a point mass at 0.999999.

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