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Bayesian stats book banned in China
- michaelty 16y agoPfft, frequentists.
- dejb 16y ago1.3 Billion can't be wrong.
- pmichaud 16y agoIs there any way to find out the specific reason the book was not allowed to be published?
- younata 16y agoThe author doesn't know, but he hypothesizes that it's because "the idea of prior distribution [is] contrary to Communism".
- javanix 16y agoWhich seems more than a little ridiculous to me, but ... it is China.
- llimllib 16y agoPretty sure he was joking there?
- Alex3917 16y agoIt seems like a joke at first, but once you take into account China's previous actions it's actually quite likely.
- CWuestefeld 16y agoLike the (brief) period when the sense of traffic lights was changed, so that "red" indicated "go". This makes perfect sense, since anything red must of course stand for making progress.
- Alex3917 16y agoI was actually just trying to make a bayesian joke, but I think it was a little too subtle.
- meric 16y agoIf you watch the stock market news in China on TV, a stock highlighted in red means it went up, and green means down.
- metastew 16y agoThat's an interesting sidenote. I wonder if it's a subtle psychological trick to not associate red with negative connotations (such as "declining profits", "stop", "blood") because the color red is part of the CPC's identity makeup.Or maybe it's just a cultural thing, like how they wear white when someone died and black to celebrate a birth/life (I'm not sure if it is a chinese custom however, but I know it's an asian custom).
- disponsible 16y agoI'm pretty sure it has to do with the material of examples used in the book rather than with the actual theory.
- bigfudge 16y agoAgreed. If it's Gelman many examples will be from elections, which in itself might be enough to give the communist party in china pause.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mayank 16y agoI would seriously doubt this is the reason. If you want to learn applied Bayesian stats, you go to a machine learning or game theory conference or read research papers. There are plenty of Chinese citizens doing both, including low-level university students, so this really can't be the reason. I would think that the reason has something to do with objectionable content inside this specific book, perhaps in an example problem as another commenter noted. Bayesian stats have been around for a very long time, and it's senseless to try to block textbook-level access to it, unless you're really trying to block just the textbook itself.
- Symmetry 16y agoOn the other hand, nothing says that the China censorship mechanism has to be consistent, in fact I'd almost expect them to be arbitrary and capricious. It might be that whatever individual decided to ban this book would also have wanted to ban other the things you mention if they had been aware of them.
- mayank 16y agoIf they try to ban Chinese citizens from international conferences and journals in anything related to Bayesian methods, I can tell you firsthand that a lot of math/CS/ML/AI conferences will shrivel up quite a bit. They won't die, but it'll be like the Cold War, where Russian mathematicians made advances that were insulated from the west for many years, and vice versa. A net loss for everyone, especially in a topic as fundamental as Bayesian methods.
- Symmetry 16y agoYou misunderstand, I'm very much not saying that there is or will be a general policy of banning things related to Bayesian methods. Rather, thats its quite possible one mid-level bureaucrat thought that Bayesian methods were unacceptable in this one instance. Maybe he (I think "he" is a safe assumption here) was confused and really thought that this sort of math was subversive. Maybe he was worried that he hadn't banned enough things this month and his supperiors would think he was lazy. Maybe the publisher failed to pay the customary bribe. In any of these cases, though, the official reason for the ban might very well be that "Bayesian Methods are subversive".
- niels_olson 16y agoProbably because they're using Bayesian filters on various security fronts: internal threat analysis, the great firewall, whatever side projects some bureaucrat is using to pad his income. This is a problem with classification/censorship schemes: the censors/classifiers are all stove-piped, so their decisions come with a high degree of variability. The censor may well have been unaware that this is a whole field of work, or, is aware, but isn't responsible for the censoring decisions about all other related titles.
- equark 16y agoGelman is also a political scientist and many of the book's examples are about elections and election forecasting, probably not topics the Chinese government likes citizens reading about.
- willscott 16y agoWhile the thought that there's something in this book that is being censored is an appealing story, it's also a less than likely explanation. My guess is that the chinese publisher didn't want to pay royalties, and this was a convenient way to get a good quality copy of the book for printing without having to share profit.
- markeroon 16y agoI think you nailed it.
- markeroon 16y agoI've been thinking about it, and this may not be it. It sounds like he already has a relationship with this publisher for domestic publishing.
- markeroon 16y agoI've been thinking about it, and this may not be it. It sounds like he already has a relationship with this publisher for domestic publishing.
- john_horton 16y agoStrange that it was banned. Maybe it had to do with the vignettes---some of the examples are from political science (e.g., election results, polling) and another deals with arsenic in drinking water...or maybe Hu Jintao feels the way to deal with hierarchal data is to cluster standard errors.
- kia 16y agoI didn't realize that things in China are that crazy...
- raganwald 16y ago"Bayesian Statistics are just a theory. Teachers should be required to state this to students and also to give equal time to alternate theories, such as the theory of Intelligent Predetermination." Are things in China that crazy?
- jdminhbg 16y agoUnless you are forbidden to publish books on Evolution in the US, then yes, things in China are that crazy.
- raganwald 16y agoi don't mean that specific kind of crazy, but rather an overall suggestion that humans of all extractions have a habit of arguing with the facts for various reasons. But yeah, since you ask, I believe that the kind of people who want creationism taught in public schools would ban books on evolution if they thought they could get away with it.
- jdminhbg 16y agoSure, there are people crazy enough that they would ban books on evolution, just are there are undoubtedly people who are crazy enough to ban books on creationism. Those are probably not even near the top of the list of crazy things people wish they could do. The reason that it is the case that "things are this crazy in China" is that there is a difference between the existence of people who would probably enjoy implementing crazy policies and the actual implementation of crazy policies.
- raganwald 16y agoOh, we're in violent agreement. The thing about the USA and Canada is that we're constitutional democracies. That doesn't mean that as people we're any less crazy than places with a different system, but our constitutions act as a brake slowing down implementation of crazy policies and providing a kind of "undo" when things go wrong. As we saw in the FLQ Crisis and again during the G20 summit, Canadians can lock thousands of people up without due process of law. As we saw in Kansas, certain Americans can ban the teaching of established science in the classroom. But our system at least makes these things aberrations and provides dissenters a way to rectify the problems in the courts.' edit: I think what I'm trying to say is "Our system provides us with an undo, but it's only good when we remain vigilant against craziness. If we become complacent and assume that we as people are somehow too intelligent or too morally centered to do crazy things, wham, we do crazy things too."
- danielhfrank 16y ago"I think that the next printing of our book should have "Banned in China" slapped on the cover. That should be good for sales, right?" I would buy that in a heartbeat
- lightoverhead 16y agoHi Guys, I am from China, and of course the Bayesian is taught in China. Only in the culture revolution time, this crazy thing may happen; but it's long time ago when Mao was alive. Now China is a modern society; of course, the Bayesian theory is taught in schools; otherwise how could they send the spaceship to the outer space and have the fastest super computer in the world so far. you are smart hackers, not a bunch of kids controlled by traditional biases. As to censorship, that's right, china has notorious censorship. I guess the author's book must have some contents/examples regarding political issues; not Bayesian itself was the reason for the book being censored. These days, when people talked about censorship, I always think of wiki-leaks ......
- gort 16y agoof course, the Bayesian theory is taught in schools; otherwise how could they send the spaceship to the outer space and have the fastest super computer in the world Do these things require specifically Bayesian statistics?
- lightoverhead 16y agowhat do you think?
- gort 16y agoI think it's not immediately obvious why they would.
- lightoverhead 16y agoI agree, it's not immediate application. But Bayesian is one of the most important or fundamental knowledge to develop these cutting-edge technologies.
- yters 16y agoHow? I'm experienced with spacecraft design and the like, and have never heard of Bayesian probability theory being used. If it was fundamental I'd expect some mention, somewhere.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- nkurz 16y agoYes, and the purpose of this post is to decipher that reason. From your certainty, it sounds like you might be in a position to offer it?
- jcr 16y agoI realize the "Death to the Shaw" spelled out by the first word of every seventeenth page was supposed to be a joke, but it is not very funny in light of the recent events of the last handful of days: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/0105/Suicide-of-Iran-Shah-s-son-Alireza-Pahlavi-caps-life-of-sorrow-in-exile http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/0105/Suicide... Though I viciously dislike of all forms of royalty, they are still human beings and they did not get a choice about being born into the nonsense.
- Estragon 16y agoI realize the "Death to the Shaw" spelled out by the first word of every seventeenth page was supposed to be a joke According to the Amazon search facility, none of the 26 instances of the word "death" appear first on a page. So yeah, I think it's a joke.
- riobard 16y agoI remember when I was taking an entry-level Economics course in China. We were using Paul Samuelson's classic textbook “Economics”. The English version mentioned China in some not-so-pretty examples. Apparently the translated Chinese version replaced “China” with a generic “One country”.
- est 16y ago1. You can still buy this book in Chinese online book stores http://www.51eng.com/cn/bookdetail.asp?id=602871 http://www.51eng.com/cn/bookdetail.asp?id=602871 http://www.51eng.com/cn/bookdetail.asp?id=602870 http://www.51eng.com/cn/bookdetail.asp?id=602870 2. As a Chinese myself, I can confirm Bayesian is not taught in high school statistics, but defintely taught in college statistics course. It's called 贝叶斯概率 in Chinese.
- vorg 16y agoYou can probably also download a photocopied PDF of it, as you can many English books, as well as American TV shows and movies. Actions in China is divided into the "official" and the "unofficial". Officially, only 20 foreign movies a year are allowed in. "Unofficially", you can choose from hundreds at your local DVD store, nowadays usually with 8 or 10 movies, or an entire season of TV episodes, on the one disk, going for less than US $1. Sometimes when they build a brick wall here, someone else will come back within a day to smash an ugly-looking hole in it. Officially, no-one's allowed through, but unofficially, you are.