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jsalvatier comments on Bayesian exercise - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: RolfAndreassen 21 September 2011 09:34PM

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Comment author: jsalvatier 22 September 2011 02:53:32PM *  5 points [-]

You need calculus if you're going to try to estimate any continuous quantities, but you can often avoid this by making the variable discrete. Instead of saying "the proportion is a number [0,1]" you say "the proportion is either 0, .25, .5, .75 or 1". This approximates the continuous version and can be done without any calculus.