The Value of Science

The Dutch government is about to unleash upon academia a series of draconian budget cuts coupled with a series of other measures that will stunt the growth of the Dutch knowledge-based economy to the maximum extent possible. What is Dutch academia to do? A large protest is planned on November 14th, but no one will listen. The current government was…

read more

Bayesian Conference Next Week in Amsterdam: Advances in Network Modeling, Demography, and More

The conference “Bayesian Methods for the Social Sciences II”  will take place October 16-18 (next week!) at the University of Amsterdam. Leading researchers will discuss Bayesian advances in network modeling, demography, model selection, and language change. The complete programme is here. You can register until just before the conference starts. Currently we still have enough room to accommodate a few…

read more

Another Brief Test of Your Bayesian Intuition: The Answer

In a previous blog post, we proposed the following test of your Bayesian intuition: Three friends –Alex, Bart, and Cedric– each assign their own prior distribution to a binomial chance parameter θ. Let’s say that θ is the chance that Harriet bakes a vegan pancake rather than a bacon pancake. Alex assigns θ a beta(300,3) prior distribution, indicating a strong…

read more

Another Brief Test of Your Bayesian Intuition

Three friends –Alex, Bart, and Cedric– each assign their own prior distribution to a binomial chance parameter θ. Let’s say that θ is the chance that Harriet bakes a vegan pancake rather than a bacon pancake. Alex assigns θ a beta(300,3) prior distribution, indicating a strong belief in high values of θ (i.e., Alex predicts that almost all of Harriet’s…

read more

How to Memorize Bayes’ Rule

Bayes’ rule dictates how new data update the credibility of competing accounts of the world . An immediate consequence of the definition of conditional probability, Bayes’ rule is usually presented as follows: The way I mentally check this equation is to take the denominator of the expression on the right-hand side, , and multiply it with the left side of…

read more

Aleatory Uncertainty and the River Rubicon

Mounted on a bridge across the river Rubicon, the bust of Julius Caesar eyes the Adriatic sea. Caesar’s nose is shiny, perhaps (but his is speculative, based on limited observations) because passersby feel tempted to touch it with their index finger. A high resolution version is available here (CC-BY). Photo taken by Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, August 4, 2024. In 49 BC,…

read more