At 01:23 AM 9/28/01 +0000, Radford Neal wrote:
radford makes a nice quick summary of the basic differences between bayesian and frequentist positions, which is helpful. these distinctions are important IF one is seriously studying statistical ideas personally, i think that trying to make these distinction for introductory students however is a waste of time ... these are things for "majors" in statistics or "statisticians" to discuss and battle over in reference to a CI, the critical issue is CAN it be said that ... in the long run, there is a certain probability of producing CIs (using some CI construction procedure) that ... contain the parameter value ... that is, how FREQUENTLY we expect the CIs to contain the true value ... well, yes we can THAT is the important idea and, i think that if we try (for the sake of edification of the intro student)to defend it or reject it according to being proper bayesian/frequentist or improper ... is totally irrelevant to the basic concept but, that is just my opinion >In article <yyPs7.55095$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, >John Jackson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >this is the second time I have seen this word used: "frequentist"? What does > >it mean? > >It's the philosophy of statistics that holds that probability can >meaningfully be applied only to repeatable phenomena, and that the >meaning of a probability is the frequency with which something happens >in the long run, when the phenomenon is repeated. This rules out >using probability to describe uncertainty about a parameter value, >such as the mass of the hydrogen atom, since there's just one true >value for the parameter, not a sequence of values. _________________________________________________________ dennis roberts, educational psychology, penn state university 208 cedar, AC 8148632401, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
