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This is how frequentist statistics works. You ask the wrong question ("the chance of the data occurring given the assumption") and use clean, rigorous, impecca

by gburt 14y ago

This is how frequentist statistics works. You ask the wrong question ("the chance of the data occurring given the assumption") and use clean, rigorous, impeccable math to get an answer. Bayesian statistics is (usually) the opposite - you ask the correct question ("the chance of the assumption being correct") but find that there is no way without making some big assumptions to get to the answer. Here's some good (possibly more "fair" than I've been above) discussion if anyone wants to read/think about this more: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/22/bayesian-and-frequentist-reasoning-in-plain-english http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/22/bayesian-and-fre... http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Bayesian-and-frequentist-statisticians http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Bayesian...

WildUtah 14y ago
A concise explanation of the difference between Bayesian and Frequentist techniques in statistics: http://xkcd.com/1132/ http://xkcd.com/1132/
- gburt 14y ago
  You know, I didn't understand that comic when it was posted (despite feeling like I have an understanding of Bayesian vs. frequentist statistics) and I still don't. So, I looked it up and apparently I'm not the only one. It seems to me, and the commenters on stats.stackexchange [1] that this comic both misinterprets frequentist statistics and misrepresents Bayesian statistics. I realize that XKCD is a nerdy comic meant to be entertaining - I just wanted to leave this discussion here in case anyone else is confused; I think this is an important distinction and one most people interested in statistics should spend some time thinking about. [1] http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/43339/whats-wrong-with-xkcds-frequentists-vs-bayesians-comic http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/43339/whats-wrong-w... Edit: I can't edit my first comment now, but gweinberg's post (sibling to the grandparent of this) words the problem perfectly.

by gburt 14y ago

WildUtah 14y ago

A concise explanation of the difference between Bayesian and Frequentist techniques in statistics: http://xkcd.com/1132/ http://xkcd.com/1132/

gburt 14y ago
You know, I didn't understand that comic when it was posted (despite feeling like I have an understanding of Bayesian vs. frequentist statistics) and I still don't. So, I looked it up and apparently I'm not the only one. It seems to me, and the commenters on stats.stackexchange [1] that this comic both misinterprets frequentist statistics and misrepresents Bayesian statistics. I realize that XKCD is a nerdy comic meant to be entertaining - I just wanted to leave this discussion here in case anyone else is confused; I think this is an important distinction and one most people interested in statistics should spend some time thinking about. [1] http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/43339/whats-wrong-with-xkcds-frequentists-vs-bayesians-comic http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/43339/whats-wrong-w... Edit: I can't edit my first comment now, but gweinberg's post (sibling to the grandparent of this) words the problem perfectly.