Talk:1132: Frequentists vs. Bayesians
Note: taking that bet would be a mistake. If the Bayesian is right, you're out $50. If he's wrong, everyone is about to die and you'll never get to spend the winnings. Of course, this meta-analysis is itself a type of Bayesian thinking, so Dunning-Kruger Effect would apply. - Frankie (talk) 13:50, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
- You don't think you could spend fifty bucks in eight minutes? ;-) (PS: wikipedia is probably a better link than lmgtfy: Dunning-Kruger effect) -- IronyChef (talk) 15:35, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Randall has referenced the Labyrinth guards before: xkcd 246:Labyrinth puzzle. Plus he has satirized p<0.05 in xkcd 882:Significant--Prooffreader (talk) 15:59, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
A bit of maths. Let event N be the sun going nova and event Y be the detector giving the answer "Yes". The detector has already given a positive answer so we want to compute P(N|Y). Applying the Bayes' theorem:
- P(N|Y) = P(Y|N) * P(N) / P(Y)
- P(Y|N) = 1
- P(N) = 0.0000....
- P(Y|N) * P(N) = 0.0000...
- P(Y) = p(Y|N)*P(N) + P(Y|-N)*P(-N)
- P(Y|-N) = 1/36
- P(-N) = 0.999999...
- P(Y) = 0 + 1/36 = 1/36
- P(N|Y) = 0 / (1/36) = 0
Quite likely it's not entirely correct. Lmpk (talk) 16:22, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Here's what I get for the application of Bayes' Theorem:
- P(N|Y) = P(Y|N) * P(N) / P(Y)
- = P(Y|N) * P(N) / [P(Y|N) * P(N) + P(Y|~N) * P(~N)]
- = 35/36 * P(N) / [35/36 * P(N) + 1/36 * (1 - P(N))]
- = 35 * P(N) / [35 * P(N) - P(N) + 1]
- < 35 * P(N)
- = 35 * (really small number)
So, if you believe it's extremely unlikely for the sun to go nova, then you should also believe it's unlikely a Yes answer is true.
I wouldn't say the comic is about election prediction models. It's about a long-standing dispute between two different schools of statisticians, a dispute that began before Nate Silver was born. It's possible that the recent media attention for Silver and his ilk inspired this subject, but it's the kind of geeky issue Randall would typically take on in other circumstances too. MGK (talk) 19:44, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
