You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Manfred comments on Open thread, January 25- February 1 - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: NancyLebovitz 25 January 2014 02:52PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (316)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Manfred 25 January 2014 07:13:57PM 2 points [-]
Comment author: Locaha 25 January 2014 08:36:09PM 3 points [-]

Actually, I started reading that one and found it too hard.

Comment author: edanm 25 January 2014 09:18:16PM 0 points [-]

IS this a good book to start with? I know it's the standard "Bayes" intro around here, but is it good for someone with, let's say, zero formal probability/statistics training?

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 26 January 2014 02:45:09PM 3 points [-]

I was under the impression that the "this is definitely not a book for beginners" was the standard consensus here: I seem to recall seeing some heavily-upvoted comments saying that you should be approximately at the level of a math/stats graduate student before reading it. I couldn't find them with a quick search, but here's one comment that explicitly recommends another book over it.

Comment author: [deleted] 25 January 2014 10:02:32PM 0 points [-]

I think it's even better if you're not familiar with frequentist statistics because you won't have to unlearn it first, but I know many people here disagree.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 26 January 2014 04:06:19AM 0 points [-]

I suppose it's better that to never have suffered through frequentist statistics first, but I think you appreciate the right way a lot more after you've had to suffer through the wrong way for a while.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 January 2014 09:42:46AM 0 points [-]

Well, Jaynes does point out how bad frequentism is as often as he can get away with. I guess the main thing you're missing out if you weren't previously familiar with it is knowing whether he's attacking a strawman.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 26 January 2014 07:00:59AM 0 points [-]

I agree, that's why I'm glad I learned Bayes first. Makes you appreciate the good stuff more.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 January 2014 09:43:47AM 1 point [-]

Did you misread the comment you're replying to, are you sarcastic, or am I missing something?