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I agree that his first example, "The Girl Named Florida" was a confusing example. I feel pretty comfortable with Bayesian statistics, and I thought the other e

by spin 14y ago

I agree that his first example, "The Girl Named Florida" was a confusing example. I feel pretty comfortable with Bayesian statistics, and I thought the other examples that I saw were pretty clear. But his very first example jumps you out to another webpage, and then he mixes it with "the red-haired problem". It was irritating. His next example, "The Cookie Problem" is the classic intro-to-Bayes example, IMO.

gknoy 14y ago
As someone with nearly zero knowledge of statistics or Bayes' Theorem, I agree: the cookie problem was a very clear example to follow. The "Girl named Florida" solution, while interesting, probably doesn't work as well as a textbook example, at least not in that stage of learning. Reading the Florida problem solution, it made some sense, but was definitely of a higher level of complexity than the rest of the text. What I found really interesting was that the answers to some of the other questions on the "Girl Named Florida" discussion required knowledge which I would not have considered general math-ish knowledge: > If the parents have brown hair > and one of their children has red hair, > we know that both parents are heterozygous, > so their chance of having a red-haired girl is 1/8. Interesting to learn, but this "if you also happen to know this ..." step is something that was mildly frustrating. (edit: Since the grandparent post linked the Girl Named Florida blog post, I guess I don't need to.)