Bayes, 250 years ago

Exactly 250 years ago, on December 23rd, while some people were still shopping to get presents for their kids, Mr Price took some time to write a letter to the Royal Society of London,

He sent an essay towards solving a problem in the doctrine of chances, writen by an old friend of his (who just died), Mr. Bayes,

A few days ago, Stephen Stigler came in Montréal to give a talk on Bayes, and I learnt that this title is actually not the one Price chose for the essay. The true title of the essay sent to the Royal Academy was

i.e.

The story of the true title of Bayes’s essay can be found on http://arxiv.org/, There are interesting connexions between Bayes theory and Christianism, actually. But I won’t spend time on December 23rd, talking about probabilities… I still have presents to find…


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Arthur Charpentier (December 23, 2013). Bayes, 250 years ago. Freakonometrics. Retrieved March 18, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/out7


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.