In the above paragraph, I said that “most of” the tools of statistics strive for complete objectivity. There is one important exception to this rule, though. A branch of statistics called Bayesian statistics has achieved growing popularity over the last fifty years or so. Once considered almost anathema, it has now gone completely mainstream, and you can attend an entire statistics conference without hearing any of the great debates between “Bayesians” and “frequentists” that used to thunder in the 1960s and 1970s. The prototype of Bayesian analysis goes like this: Prior Belief + New Evidence
...more
