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Couldn't agree more. I waited until the junior year of my undergrad to take stats. That was much, much too late. Everyone should know Bayes' theorem. It's not

Couldn't agree more. I waited until the junior year of my undergrad to take stats. That was much, much too late. Everyone should know Bayes' theorem. It's not that hard to grasp, but it's a wildly powerful idea. Even if you aren't plugging-and-chugging, just use it to dissect logical fallacies.

mp05 3y ago
Yeah Bayes' Theorem and confidence intervals, population vs sample means, and margins of error are all things any college graduate should understand. When you realize you can bake correlations/associations to imply whatever you want, you start taking any percentages people toss around a lot less seriously.
Jensson 3y ago
> Everyone should know Bayes' theorem That is basic probability, not statistics. Basic probability is taught before high school in many parts of the world and is very easy to teach, there is no reason to put a lot of focus on this in high school. You have the kids write down probability graphs from events, that takes a few lessons. Then you do some basics about confidence intervals and sample sizes. Basically every kid learns this at some point, just that they forget and now they think it is missing. Kids forget about what they learned about statistics since it doesn't seem relevant to them.
- tomjakubowski 3y ago
  If we allowed schools to also operate as casinos, students would remember probability better. There would be a whole host of other side effects, sure, but maybe a well-educated populace is worth it.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    There's an episode of The Wire, in which Presbo finds kids in his class betting on dice; so he collects the dice from all the board-games in the school store, and starts running classes on probability. The kids are totally engaged, and they start winning money from street-corner dice games.
- darkerside 3y ago
  I'm familiar with Bayesian statistics but never learned the theorem, that I remember. Is this really basic probability taught in most grade schools?
  - Jensson 3y ago
    You learn about conditional probabilities and how to calculate around those. They teach Bayes theorem but doesn't use that name or the formula, since the formula is too hard for kids to read, but you are given the intuitive explanation for how conditional events are related to each other and you write those out in event trees where it is easy to see. I clearly remember getting taught the exact equivalent to Bayes theorem in middle school, they just didn't call it that. If anyone who learned that sees Bayes theorem later it is intuitively obvious, so there is really no need to bring it up, and there is no reason to take a course to understand Bayes theorem later as an adult. Those things are easy thanks to what you learned in middle school.
    - darkerside 3y ago
      Went to school in the US and don't recall getting exposed to this, and it's actually not that intuitive for me
- ryukoposting 3y ago
  I vaguely recall doing probability in middle school, but it was never framed in formal terms. The lessons never really transcended "let's roll some dice and draw some graphs." The college course helped me project those ideas into other domains. You can use probability theory to dissect rhetoric, for example. Never thought about that.
pokerface_86 3y ago
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mp05 3y ago

Yeah Bayes' Theorem and confidence intervals, population vs sample means, and margins of error are all things any college graduate should understand. When you realize you can bake correlations/associations to imply whatever you want, you start taking any percentages people toss around a lot less seriously.

Jensson 3y ago

> Everyone should know Bayes' theorem That is basic probability, not statistics. Basic probability is taught before high school in many parts of the world and is very easy to teach, there is no reason to put a lot of focus on this in high school. You have the kids write down probability graphs from events, that takes a few lessons. Then you do some basics about confidence intervals and sample sizes. Basically every kid learns this at some point, just that they forget and now they think it is missing. Kids forget about what they learned about statistics since it doesn't seem relevant to them.

tomjakubowski 3y ago
If we allowed schools to also operate as casinos, students would remember probability better. There would be a whole host of other side effects, sure, but maybe a well-educated populace is worth it.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  There's an episode of The Wire, in which Presbo finds kids in his class betting on dice; so he collects the dice from all the board-games in the school store, and starts running classes on probability. The kids are totally engaged, and they start winning money from street-corner dice games.
darkerside 3y ago
I'm familiar with Bayesian statistics but never learned the theorem, that I remember. Is this really basic probability taught in most grade schools?
- Jensson 3y ago
  You learn about conditional probabilities and how to calculate around those. They teach Bayes theorem but doesn't use that name or the formula, since the formula is too hard for kids to read, but you are given the intuitive explanation for how conditional events are related to each other and you write those out in event trees where it is easy to see. I clearly remember getting taught the exact equivalent to Bayes theorem in middle school, they just didn't call it that. If anyone who learned that sees Bayes theorem later it is intuitively obvious, so there is really no need to bring it up, and there is no reason to take a course to understand Bayes theorem later as an adult. Those things are easy thanks to what you learned in middle school.
  - darkerside 3y ago
    Went to school in the US and don't recall getting exposed to this, and it's actually not that intuitive for me
ryukoposting 3y ago
I vaguely recall doing probability in middle school, but it was never framed in formal terms. The lessons never really transcended "let's roll some dice and draw some graphs." The college course helped me project those ideas into other domains. You can use probability theory to dissect rhetoric, for example. Never thought about that.

pokerface_86 3y ago

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