the.com/bayesian

belief is a number, and new evidence just sent you an invoice.

means an approach to probability where you start with a prior belief and update it as evidence arrives, instead of pretending you knew nothing.

from named after thomas bayes, an 18th-century english minister whose theorem on conditional probability was published posthumously in 1763 by a friend who found it in his papers.

for instance

spam filtersgmail updates probability a word means junk mail

fivethirtyeight electionsnate silver updates win odds as polls arrive

medical testingdoctors revise disease odds after a positive result

the.com/
what’s happening now · the.com · generated