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Having 6 previous coronaviruses allows you to construct a prior with mean and variance. Gaussian distributions assume the least about a distribution. I'm not su
by rubatuga 5y ago
Having 6 previous coronaviruses allows you to construct a prior with mean and variance. Gaussian distributions assume the least about a distribution. I'm not sure why you are so against using information/bits that we already know to be true in trying to make predictions about SARS-CoV-2. Humans do bayesian reasoning all the time, albeit in a much less formal fashion. There is no cargo culting here.
- fsh 5y agoOf course you can construct all kinds of interesting distributions with any random piece of data. This doesn't mean that it makes any sense to do so. Pretending that human reasoning is somehow equivalent to Bayesian inference (and abusing domain-specific terminology like "prior") is exactly the kind of cargo culting that Feynman wrote about. If there is no actual mathematical model and software implementation, you are not doing Bayesian inference (and the airplanes will just not land).
- shoto_io 5y agoI am unsure what you are suggesting instead. Should we ignore everything we know from the past?