It may be useful to actually type out how you use the above thought experiment to explain Bayes. That would make it more useful for those of us still confused or unsure about what Bayes means (hey, I'm a newbie, be nice), and it would help people critique the example in how it teaches the theorem.
For example, why is it better to ask, "If a 3 is pulled, is it more likely to be an 8-sided dice or not?" than to ask, "If a random dice is rolled, is it more likely to be a 3 or not?"
For example, why is it better to ask, "If a 3 is pulled, is it more likely to be an 8-sided dice or not?" than to ask, "If a random dice is rolled, is it more likely to be a 3 or not?"
Good question. The second question is "just a probability" question. The first question asks you to condition on evidence ("If the randomly chosen die is rolled and comes up 3") and infer "backward" to what this tells you about the die. That's why Bayesian reasoning applies.
The reasoning goes like this: before I roll the di...
I've had a bit of success with getting people to understand Bayesianism at parties and such, and I'm posting this thought experiment that I came up with to see if it can be improved or if an entirely different thought experiment would be grasped more intuitively in that context:
I originally came up with this idea to explain falsifiability which is why I didn't go with say the example in the better article on Bayesianism (i.e. any other number besides a 3 rolled refutes the possibility that the trick die was picked) and having a hypothesis that explains too much contradictory data, so eventually I increase the sides that the die has (like a hypothetical 50-sided die), the different types of die in the jar (100-sided, 6-sided, trick die), and different distributions of die in the jar (90% of the die are 200-sided but a 3 is rolled, etc.). Again, I've been discussing this at parties where alcohol is flowing and cognition is impaired yet people understand it, so I figure if it works there then it can be understood intuitively by many people.