ON BREXIT AND THE RENAMING OF BAYESIAN STATISTICS

                                                                 

Brexit: "Bayesian" statistics renamed "Laplacian" statistics

June 27, 2016

By John K. Kruschke

(This article was originally published at Doing Bayesian Data Analysis, and syndicated atStatsBlogs.) 

With the U.K. leaving the E.U., it's time for "Bayesian" to exit its titular role and be replaced by "Laplacian".  

;-) 

Various historians (e.g., Dale, 1999; McGrayne, 2011; as cited in DBDA2E) have argued that despite Bayes and Price having published the basic formula first, it was Laplace who did all the heavy lifting to develop the methods. Laplace was French, while Bayes and Price were English. 

On the other hand, Bayes did attend the University of Edinburgh, and lived around London, so maybe he would have voted to stay!

This humorous implication of Brexit was suggested by a participant at a workshop I presented in St. Gallen, Switzerland, last week, after I briefly described the history above and showed the book photographed at Bayes' tomb and at Laplace's memorial. I have forgotten who it was that made the joke. If the originator of the joke is reading this, please put a comment below or send me an email!

On the other hand, Bayes did attend the University of Edinburgh, and lived around London, so maybe he would have voted to stay! (Diego Andres Perez Ruiz)

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7Diego Andrés Pérez Ruiz and 6 others

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Thomas Leonard So it should be. Whatever the origins of Bayes Theorem (and it certainly wasn't Bayes or Price) Pierre-Simon de Laplace was the founding father of Bayesian Statistics.

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Michele Guindani ISLA sounds better than ISBA

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Thomas Leonard  

Also, conditional Laplacian approximations provide a sound basis for much of marginal inference. As Blaise Pascal and Pierre Fermat invoked changing subjective probabilities during the seventeen century (see my Personal History of Bayesian Statistics) I have often wondered whether one of them (e.g. Pascal) first discovered Bayes Theorem, I anyway regard the false celebration of Thomas Bayes and Richard Price as an English plot to take due credit away from the French

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