The Misconception Gelman and Hennig (2017, p. 989) argue that subjective priors cannot be evaluated by means of the data: “However, priors in the subjectivist Bayesian conception are not open to falsification (…), because by definition they must be fixed before observation. Adjusting the prior after having observed the data to be analysed violates coherence. The Bayesian system as derived…

The otherwise excellent article by Consonni et al. (2018), discussed last week, makes the following claim: “…the initial use of the BF can be attributed both to Jeffreys and Turing who introduced it independently around the same time (Kass & Raftery, 1995)” (Consonni et al., 2018, p. 638)                   This claim recently…

The purpose of this blog post is to call attention to the paper “Prior Distributions for Objective Bayesian Analysis”, authored by Guido Consonni, Dimitris Fouskakis, Brunero Liseo, and Ioannis Ntzoufras (NB: Ioannis is a member of the JASP advisory board!). The paper –published in the journal “Bayesian Analysis”— provides a comprehensive overview of objective Bayesian analysis, with an emphasis on…

“Bayesian Probability for Babies” is a book that explains Bayes’ rule through a simple story about cookies. I battle-tested the book on my two-year old son Theo (admittedly no longer a baby), and he seemed somewhat intrigued by the idea of candy-covered cookies, although the more subtle points of the story must have eluded him. Theo gives the book three…

Available on https://psyarxiv.com/etk7g/, this is a comment on a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine (Coomarasamy et al., 2019). A response by the authors will follow at a later point. A recent trial assessed the effectiveness of progesterone in preventing miscarriages.1 The number of live births was 74.7% (1513/2025) in the progesterone group and 72.5% (1459/2013) in…

This post is an extended synopsis of Hoogeveen, S., Sarafoglou A., & Wagenmakers, E.-J. (2019). Laypeople Can Predict Which Social Science Studies Replicate. Preprint available on PsyArXiv:https://psyarxiv.com/egw9d.      Abstract Large-scale collaborative projects recently demonstrated that several key findings from the social science literature could not be replicated successfully. Here we assess the extent to which a finding’s replication success relates to…

This week’s post continues the review of Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. As I indicated last week, the book is fun and informative, and I gave it 4 out of 5 stars. Consider for instance the following footnote (p. 90):             “I lifted these [absurd reasons people give for their car accidents – EJ]…

Written by Annie “The Duchess of Poker” Duke, Thinking in Bets is a national bestseller, and for good reason. The writing style is direct and to-the-point, and the advice is motivated by concrete examples taken from the author’s own experience. For instance, one anecdote concerns a bet among a group of friends on whether or not one of them, “Ira…