Better Than Rules: How Bayesian Theory Is The New If Statement

Re:Better Than Rules: How Bayesian Theory Is The New If Stat... by npk on Thursday April 19, 2007 @05:28AM (#14540)

ced - "Bayesian Theory" is more than just a formula, it's a way of thinking. A beautiful book exists on this subject, "Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms" by David Mackay, which you can read for free online. Granted, the nomenclature is confusing, there is a Bayes formula. [Edit: jey mentioned Jaynes' book. Another excellent reference. Link to chapter in Mackay (http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itprnn/ps/22.40.pdf read from bottom of page 25 on)]

In regards to the unsophisticated aspect of startups, I think that much of the low-lying fruit has been picked. Statistical sophistication is but one ladder to the higher fruits. Why? Social websites have enormous databases of information about their users. People who /understand/ data will be able to take social networks to the next level.

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Re:Better Than Rules: How Bayesian Theory Is The New If Stat... by jwp on Thursday April 19, 2007 @04:56PM (#14781)

Good cites. I second them. Mackay and Jaynes are excellent but can get out of hand quickly. Duda, Hart and Stork is another good hardcore option. When I need the book "for dummies," which is pretty often, the Weka book and Mitchell's Machine Learning are helpful.

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