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Manfred comments on Michael Jordan dissolves Bayesian vs Frequentist inference debate [video lecture] - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Academian 30 August 2011 01:12AM

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Comment author: Manfred 30 August 2011 01:40:55AM *  1 point [-]

Dissappointed. Also, I've seen that video linked somewhere else around here. Still interesting though.

Anyhow, the dichotomy he makes may work for some field/subfield - I don't really know. But it doesn't work for a lot of differences between perspectives on statistics.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 03 September 2011 04:56:25AM 1 point [-]

Can you elaborate here at all? I feel bad for appealing to authority here, but Mike is widely considered the leader of the field of statistical ML, so it is a priori unlikely to me that his dichotomy is limited to a single subfield. It sounds like you think I should update away from his beliefs, and I would like to if he is indeed wrong, but you haven't provided much evidence for me so far.

Comment author: Manfred 03 September 2011 07:03:12AM *  2 points [-]

Fortunately, someone else has already done the work for me :)

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/7ck/frequentist_vs_bayesian_breakdown_interpretation/

So Mike seems to be talking about (3) - whether to use "bayesian" or "frequentist" decision-making methods. However, the distinction I see (and use) most often is something like (2) - interpreting probabilities as reflecting a state of incomplete information (bayesian) or as reflecting a fact about the external world (frequentist).

Comment author: jsteinhardt 03 September 2011 01:26:47PM 0 points [-]

Thanks.