Talk:Bayesian inference

This  level-4 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Statistics Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Statistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of statistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.StatisticsWikipedia:WikiProject StatisticsTemplate:WikiProject StatisticsStatistics Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale. Mathematics High‑priority This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mathematics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mathematics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MathematicsWikipedia:WikiProject MathematicsTemplate:WikiProject Mathematicsmathematics High This article has been rated as High-priority on the project's priority scale.

Archives

Archive 1 Archive 2

This page has archives. Topics inactive for 90 days are automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III if there are more than 5.

"The likelihood function is a function of the evidence, E {\displaystyle \textstyle E} \textstyle E, while the posterior probability is a function of the hypothesis, H {\displaystyle \textstyle H} \textstyle H." I think technically both are functions of both H and E. --Davyker (talk) 18:08, 18 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

Technically, a conditional probability is a function of the conditional random variable and the article is incorrect, see Conditional_probability#Conditioning_on_a_random_variable. I think the author is confusing probabilities with density functions. ${\displaystyle P(A|B)}$ is a function of the random variable ${\displaystyle B}$ but ${\displaystyle f(y|x)}$ short for ${\displaystyle f_{Y|X=x}(y)}$ is a function of ${\displaystyle y}$. I don't think the current wording provides much clarity and it should probably be revised. 2602:41:80E4:C500:D94A:F14:3766:2B34 (talk) 02:25, 4 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

This section uses archaeology as an example in a way that bears no relation to how archaeology would deal with the hypothetical scenario and isn't clear. Martinlc (talk) 11:00, 7 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

To me as a non-statistician, the section on 'alternatives to Bayesian updating' seems to come out of the blue, as there is no previous explanation of what Bayesian updating is. I guess that it involves modifying the prior probability in the light of the new evidence, but whether this is done simply by substituting the 'posterior' probability, or something more complicated, is not clear. 2A00:23C8:7907:4B01:38EA:2480:36E4:F344 (talk) 20:42, 26 December 2021 (UTC)Reply

I can get nothing out of the subsection "Alternatives to Bayesian updating" as currently written. I am a working mathematician, though not in probability or statistics, and I do not believe the problem is mine. The subsection is extremely vague and does not for instance include any alternative formula for performing updates. The quote by Hacking which is a large fraction of the subsection's text is more philosophical than mathematical and in any case uses many terms in a technical way without defining them or linking to any standard definitions. It seems to me the section needs to either be cut or expanded. I was initially interested in the subsection because as a non-expert I was wondering if anybody actually uses alternative rules in practice. Perhaps the answer is "no" and such things are relegated to philosophy journals? 172.250.24.180 (talk) 23:59, 20 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi - I added the AI generated tag in regard to this and other edits around that time by that user, which display strong indicators of potential LLM use and thus need review for accuracy, tone, original research/synthesis, source problems, etc. Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:49, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Looks like the linked changes have (thankfully) been removed now. Danielittlewood (talk) 15:34, 16 May 2026 (UTC)Reply