Since 2017, Dora Matzke and I have been teaching the master course “Bayesian Inference for Psychological Science”. Over the years, the syllabus for this course matured into a book (and an accompanying book of answers) titled “Bayesian inference from the ground up: The theory of common sense”. The current plan is to finish the book in the next few months, and share the pdf publicly online. For now, you can click here or on the cover page below to read the first 223 pages [50 MB!]. Today we are adding another three chapters: “Interlude: Buffon’s Needle”, “The Pancake Puzzle”, and the appendix chapter “Statistical Analysis of the Binomial Distribution”.
Highlights:
- As detailed in the chapter on Buffon’s needle, there is much, much more to Buffon than the needle. Buffon constructed a working version of the “Archimedes death ray”, wrote a best-selling encyclopedia of 44 bulky volumes, largely constructed what is now the fabulous “Jardin des Plantes” in Paris, and ran one of Europe’s most modern forges. Hidden in the base of one of the statues of Buffon (not the one shown above) is….his cerebellum.
- I could talk more about the pancake chapter, but I think anything I’ll say will fall flat after the statement that Buffon’s statue contains his cerebellum. You’ll have to check out the chapter yourself!
References
Wagenmakers, E.-J., & Matzke, D. (in preparation). Bayesian inference from the ground up: The theory of common sense.
Wagenmakers, E.-J., & Matzke, D. (in preparation). Bayesian inference from the ground up: Common sense in practice.
