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You can justify that you did everything "by the book" and you don't have to make up priors. Now. You might read this as me saying that Bayesian statistics is a

by rspeer 10y ago

You can justify that you did everything "by the book" and you don't have to make up priors. Now. You might read this as me saying that Bayesian statistics is all made up, and that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that if you go Bayesian all the way, and your result is even remotely controversial, someone could easily challenge you by saying "this result would have been different with different priors, and why won't they just come out and say p < 0.01? What are they hiding?" When you do frequentist statistics, the equivalent of priors were, instead, made up for you by long scientific tradition. They're not very good priors, as the relevant xkcd illustrates. But at least it's not you making them up. In a more complex model, there's also the thing where you can't calculate the result exactly, you have to approximate it with Markov Chain Monte Carlo or something, leading to another way to doubt your results (did the MCMC converge correctly?) So instead you do frequentist statistics. You use your favorite stats package and it spits out a nice comforting p-value that will satisfy the reviewers. You have tons of guidance about how to do things. It's not a great thing, but it is a definite advantage of using frequentist statistics.

lisper 10y ago
In other words: the advantage of frequentism is that it gives you better plausible deniability when you get the wrong answer. Did I get that right?
- rspeer 10y ago
  No, and I don't know where you're getting your certainty that the answer is wrong from. How about this: find me a published scientific paper with only Bayesian results in it, no frequentist statistics at all. Argue for its superiority all you want, but I don't think anyone does it. It would be seen as a stunt.
  - lisper 10y ago
    Don't know about a paper, but here's a book: https://www.amazon.com/Proving-History-Bayess-Theorem-Historical/dp/1616145595 https://www.amazon.com/Proving-History-Bayess-Theorem-Histor...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - jcahill 10y ago
    > find me a published scientific paper with only Bayesian results in it Trivial¹, surely? > [B]ut I don't think anyone does it. It would be seen as a stunt. What did you mean by "scientific"? You'd have to hunt for a narrow reading s.t. the above holds — extant counterexamples aren't limited to any one branch. Check it out² for yourself. Further: cogsci's bayesian adoption is rapidly accelerating. The replication crisis is brutalizing huge swathes of psych: • loss of confidence in NHST is becoming near-total for many • journals are purging in turn — e.g. BASP's p-value ban³⁴ • others are overhauling stats-in-psych entirely J Math Psych alone has two recent special issues⁵⁶ on this. I mean: > no frequentist stats at all isn't even a strawman lately, let alone an absurdity. In some fields, it's a battle-cry. All that being said… re: > Argue for its superiority all you want I wouldn't even go that far. Don't give em that. Probability interpretation fundies • are all wrong, • narrow minds and waste lifespans with the cultism, and • should at least learn of the other interpretations. Pitching probability as a 1v1 isn't merely wrong-prime⁷ — it's doublepluswrong″⁸. It's pseudofundamentalism: fundies uphold foundations. Flamewars predicated on ignorance of the same gotta go, no matter how fashionable they may be. ____________________________________________________________ [1] http://enwp.org/bayesian_game http://enwp.org/bayesian_game [2] http://google.com/scholar?q=fully+bayesian http://google.com/scholar?q=fully+bayesian [3] http://doi.org/4z8 http://doi.org/4z8 | BASP 37 [4] http://doi.org/34p http://doi.org/34p | Nature re: BASP [5] http://doi.org/btqx http://doi.org/btqx | J Math Psych 72 [6] http://doi.org/btqz http://doi.org/btqz | J Math Psych 74 [7] http://enwp.org/all_models_are_wrong http://enwp.org/all_models_are_wrong [8] http://enwp.org/not_even_wrong http://enwp.org/not_even_wrong

by rspeer 10y ago

lisper 10y ago

In other words: the advantage of frequentism is that it gives you better plausible deniability when you get the wrong answer. Did I get that right?

rspeer 10y ago
No, and I don't know where you're getting your certainty that the answer is wrong from. How about this: find me a published scientific paper with only Bayesian results in it, no frequentist statistics at all. Argue for its superiority all you want, but I don't think anyone does it. It would be seen as a stunt.
- lisper 10y ago
  Don't know about a paper, but here's a book: https://www.amazon.com/Proving-History-Bayess-Theorem-Historical/dp/1616145595 https://www.amazon.com/Proving-History-Bayess-Theorem-Histor...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jcahill 10y ago
  > find me a published scientific paper with only Bayesian results in it Trivial¹, surely? > [B]ut I don't think anyone does it. It would be seen as a stunt. What did you mean by "scientific"? You'd have to hunt for a narrow reading s.t. the above holds — extant counterexamples aren't limited to any one branch. Check it out² for yourself. Further: cogsci's bayesian adoption is rapidly accelerating. The replication crisis is brutalizing huge swathes of psych: • loss of confidence in NHST is becoming near-total for many • journals are purging in turn — e.g. BASP's p-value ban³⁴ • others are overhauling stats-in-psych entirely J Math Psych alone has two recent special issues⁵⁶ on this. I mean: > no frequentist stats at all isn't even a strawman lately, let alone an absurdity. In some fields, it's a battle-cry. All that being said… re: > Argue for its superiority all you want I wouldn't even go that far. Don't give em that. Probability interpretation fundies • are all wrong, • narrow minds and waste lifespans with the cultism, and • should at least learn of the other interpretations. Pitching probability as a 1v1 isn't merely wrong-prime⁷ — it's doublepluswrong″⁸. It's pseudofundamentalism: fundies uphold foundations. Flamewars predicated on ignorance of the same gotta go, no matter how fashionable they may be. ____________________________________________________________ [1] http://enwp.org/bayesian_game http://enwp.org/bayesian_game [2] http://google.com/scholar?q=fully+bayesian http://google.com/scholar?q=fully+bayesian [3] http://doi.org/4z8 http://doi.org/4z8 | BASP 37 [4] http://doi.org/34p http://doi.org/34p | Nature re: BASP [5] http://doi.org/btqx http://doi.org/btqx | J Math Psych 72 [6] http://doi.org/btqz http://doi.org/btqz | J Math Psych 74 [7] http://enwp.org/all_models_are_wrong http://enwp.org/all_models_are_wrong [8] http://enwp.org/not_even_wrong http://enwp.org/not_even_wrong