Monday, December 23, 2013

Thomas Bayes - 250 Years On

Two hundred and fifty years ago today a paper titled, "An Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances", was presented to a meeting of the Royal Statistical Society in London. (Although, see here.)

The presenter - Richard Price. The author - (the late) Reverend Thomas Bayes.

Thus, we received "Bayes' Theorem".

A few days ago, the International Society for Bayesian Analysis held a celebratory conference to honour this momentous occasion in the history of statistical and scientific thinking.

Bayesian thinking has had a significant impact on the field of econometrics. My own Ph.D. dissertation (1975) was in Bayesian econometrics, and I was fortunate enough to have had Arnold Zellner as an external examiner.

I just wish I'd had access to the computational technology that's so freely available today!


© 2013, David E. Giles

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