“Remarks on Bayesian studies from 1963” by dynomight
Update: 2025-10-22
Description
In 1963, Mosteller and Wallace published Inference in an Authorship Problem, which used Bayesian statistics to try to infer who wrote some of the disputed Federalist Papers. (Answer: Madison) Anyway, at the end they have a list of "Remarks on Bayesian studies" which is astonishing to read 62 years later:
- Study of variation of results with different priors is recommended. Bracketing the prior is often easy. When founded in data, the choice of the prior has a status like that of the data distribution—subjectivity tempered with empiricism.
- Where possible, priors should be empirically oriented. Planning ahead for the collection of data suitable for estimating the form and underlying constants of prior distribution is useful and important, and very likely not hard to do once one gets in the frame of mind of preparing to use Bayes' theorem. The remark is all the more germane in the field of [...]
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First published:
October 21st, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DQ5RjkX4S7WfnahJD/remarks-on-bayesian-studies-from-1963
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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