This is Bayes the wrong way around. The last part should be P(A)/P(B). I have no hand in the dispute (reading here for the first time about it), but not getting the basics right is not very convincing.
Why does HN have a pattern of dismissing whole articles due to simple typos? It's as if we're so habituated to skim and do tldr-reading that our brain is working overdrive to find the slightest excuse not to have to do any type of reading beyond surface level.
I stated explicitly otherwise (I'm not even in research), something you certainly couldn't miss. I'm not quite sure, if your allegation backfires.
Especially in hot temper, people make errors. But just then they should avoid making an easy target. The authors site also has some problems with rendering math (some does, some shows still dollar signs) and this adds to a first impression of sloppyness. I t is his decision to go public - but then he has to take the consequences.
P(A,B) = P(B,A)
P(A|B) * P(B) = P(B|A) * P(A)
The formulation in the blog post would say instead:
P(A|B) * P(A) = P(B|A) * P(B)
which does not really make sense.
It seems to concern some commentators here to a much greater extent, concluding from the whole downvoting dance. I'm old-school, I received my master in mathematics more than 25 years ago. Being in stochastics, I simply spotted an error and also some dispute, the latter from the context in the article. I want to mention, that in the past people had considered a behavior like mine as helpful, rigour was a value and especially when under fire, people were expected to try even harder.
> what browser you are using maybe we can replicate and fix them
FF 72.0.1 on Win 10 here. If it helps, in the following sequence:
--- snip ---
Bayes’s Rule simply says that for any two non-independent random variables $A$ and $B$, seeing that $B$ took a specific value $b$ changes the distribution of the random variable $A$. In standard lingo, the term Pr(A=a) is called the prior, Pr(B=b∣A=a) is the likelihood, and Pr(A=a∣B=b) is the posterior.
---snap---
all the single capitals (A,B...) appear embraced with dollar signs, all the Pr(...) expression are correct (even after removing uBlock/noScript restrictions)
Also, I'll admit that messing up Bayes rule in a blog post criticizing Bayesian Neural Netowrks is pretty comical. Should have taken the time to proof read the whole thing.
Yes, it's working :)
When the rhetor introduces errors in the artifact, the rhetor's ethos with the audience is diminished.
The more fundamental the error (getting a basic equation wrong I guess?) the more trust you lose with a knowledgeable audience. If the author doesn't see that a fundamental issue was introduced, they may not have been expert enough to not introduce additional errors; the reader must spend more time double-checking the components of the argument rather than thinking about the argument itself.
If someone comes to this article as a novice in the topic and stores the error as a fact, they may end up at least confused when approaching it again in the future. HN tends to have an audience representing deep knowledge in many fields, who end up providing a thorough and varied set of quality filters. These quality filters are also really helpful to the novice who may otherwise miss the typo.
That's a sloppy statement. You haven't defined what standard. Clearly, everything is held to "a standard"; making that an entirely empty claim.
> When the rhetor introduces errors in the artifact, the rhetor's ethos with the audience is diminished.
A "rhetor" is a teacher of rhetoric. This is not the correct word in this case. In this case, the correct word is the more general "author", since the post was not teaching rhetoric. Further, the entire point of "ethos" in rhetoric is that we shouldn't be so lazy as to allow minor issues cloud our judgement.
> The more fundamental the error (getting a basic equation wrong I guess?) the more trust you lose with a knowledgeable audience.
Quite the opposite. A knowledgeable audience can decide whether to trust something based on the actual content, rather than minor surface issues. Only a lazy or uninformed audience need get distracted by typos.
Actually, I think I established a basis of discussion then later illustrated this basis with the way HN has grown and tends to enforce its standard.
> A "rhetor" is a teacher of rhetoric. This is not the correct word in this case.
A rhetor is a person practicing rhetoric, or a person delivering persuasive or effective communication. Teachers are indeed a subset of that, but also public speakers, negotiators, and e.g. authors who write to influence their audiences' understanding or perception.
I think you may also misunderstand the function of ethos in rhetoric.
> A knowledgeable audience can decide whether to trust something based on the actual content.
Perhaps we're in agreement? If the content reflects reflects clear understanding it can improve the efficacy of a rhetorical artifact, while sloppiness can reduce its persuasiveness.
Errors can diminish ethos. Correcting errors can amplify it: https://jacobbuckman.com/2020-01-17-a-sober-look-at-bayesian...
We understand Bayes rule... just had a typo and when proof reading the article we didn't check the first equation because: Who would mess up Bayes rule?