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The first-ever account of Bayes' rule for general readers. It appears to be a straightforward, one-line theorem: by updating our initial beliefs with objective new information, we get a new and improved belief. To its adherents, it is an elegant statement about learning from experience. To its opponents, it is subjectivity run amok. This is a vivid account of the generations-long dispute over one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of applied mathematics and statistics.
Synopsis
Drawing on primary source material and interviews with statisticians and other scientists, this book offers an account of Bayes' rule for general readers, It traces its discovery by an amateur mathematician in the 1740s through its development into roughly its modern form by French scientist Pierre Simon Laplace.
