You're sitting in the doctor's office waiting for the result of a test. The test will tell you whether you have a disease you really don't want to have. As you wait, it seems as if the whole world is ...

We live in a world where a lot of things seem to happen by pure chance, from winning the Lotto to losing your car keys. But the truth is, the likelihood of many everyday things happening is heavily ...

Bayes' theorem, also called Bayes' rule or Bayesian theorem, is a mathematical formula used to determine the conditional probability of events. The theorem uses the power of statistics and probability ...

Chris Wiggins, an associate professor of applied mathematics at Columbia University, offers this explanation. A patient goes to see a doctor. The doctor performs a test with 99 percent ...

This paper concerns the use of empirical Bayes methods to improve the efficiency of a parameter of interest, θ, in the presence of many nuisance parameters, {φi}, one from each data stratum. A class ...

It’s estimated that human adults make about 35,000 decisions a day — the percentage of good decisions depends on the adult. These choices can be as banal as deciding to roll or crumple toilet paper or ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American I’m not sure when I first heard of Bayes’ ...

In many application areas, a primary focus is on assessing evidence in the data refuting the assumption of independence of Y and X conditionally on Z, with Y response variables, X predictors of ...

Having a strong opinion about an issue can make it hard to take in new information about it, or to consider other options when they’re presented. Thankfully, there’s an old rule that can help us avoid ...