Excellent Free Resource Introduces Bayesian Methodology
April 10, 2013
So you want to know how Bayesian methods work? We’ve found an excellent source of information in a slideshow titled simply, “Introduction to Bayesian Methods” at SlideShare. Created by Corey Chivers for a guest biostatistics lecture at McGill University, the slides illustrate the concepts clearly. The summary gives an idea of the presentation’s scope:
- The output of a Bayesian analysis is not a single estimate of ?, but rather the entire posterior distribution, which represents our degree of belief about the value of ?.
- To get a posterior distribution, we need to specify our prior belief about ?.
- Complex Bayesian models can be estimated using MCMC.
- The posterior can be used to make both inference about ?, and quantitative predictions with proper accounting of uncertainty.
Chivers notes that these slides are also available here [PDF], while the script to run the examples can be found here. Even if you are already fluent in this methodology, we recommend tucking this slideshow away for reference whenever you need to help someone grasp the Bayesian basics.
Cynthia Murrell, April 10, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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