[Home]Revising opinions in statistics

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Researchers who use personal probability can proceed as follows:
  1. A statistical model for the data generating process is assumed. The model might specify that the data follows a normal distribution with an unknown mean.
  2. The researcher describes his opinion about the unknown mean as having a normal distribution centered at 10 with a standard deviation of 2. This would be called the researcher's prior distribution for the mean.
  3. With the [likelihood function]? of the observed data and the probabilistic description of his opinion, the researcher can calculate (using [Bayes' Theorem]?) the appropriate opinion consistent with both sources of information. This is called the posterior distribution.

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Last edited July 3, 2001 2:15 pm by Larry Sanger (diff)
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