Bayes' Theorem with Lego | Hacker News Reader

Bayes' Theorem with Lego

countbayesie.com

140 pointsCountBayesie17 comments

Dear people who write math: Don't write text as-is in math mode. Either use \mathrm/\mathit (for LaTeX) or "" (for Word) to prevent random text being interpreted (and typeset as) variables adjacent to each other. The spacing for $numberOfYellowPegs$ is particularly horrifying.

> use \mathrm/\mathit (for LaTeX)

Even better, use `\text`, which re-sizes properly.

I think it should be pointed out that bayesian's believe bayes theorem as a statement about plausibility of statements, so intuitions about an event space (which are obvious statements about sets) don't carry over to the general case.

Do you (or someone else) happen to know of a good introduction into Bayesian's intuition about the plausibility of statements?

http://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2014/03/11/frequentism-and-bay...

This a very good 4 part series on the subject, with a focus (esp. in part 3) on how this affects scientific statements.

The best reference is Jaynes's Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. The first three chapters are online for free and explain the development of probability theory as a logic for plausible reasoning [1]. If you want to get a quick taste, I wrote a short blog post that introduces the theory while working through an interesting coin-toss problem [2].

[1] http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/prob/book.pdf

[2] http://blog.moertel.com/posts/2010-12-20-more-on-the-evidenc...

If you hadn't beat me to it, this is exactly what I would have suggested

Great article, but really it's the pun in the name that made it for me. Good job, Count.

I'm a lover of awful puns, and was actually surprised how few people I knew got it! I'm very glad you appreciate it, thanks!

Jazz and math. Ah. What more could one ask for?

Agreed. I just came here to complement the URL.

I think this:

Great, we have arrived at the conditional probability of red given yellow!

...should have "red" and "yellow" switched. It's kind of confusing otherwise.

Thanks for the catch! It should be corrected now

I often break out the lego when helping the kids with their maths homework - it really helps with visualisations and spatial reasoning.

Great work! Recently I've been contemplating the idea of starting a blog that explains math concepts using LEGO bricks, this post gave me faith that there will be some interest in such a thing!

Reading this makes me wish my math profs had played with lego during class.

That's quite nice; well done. The Lego definitely helps communicate intuition. I also like how you're very thorough in the computations -- it makes a good introduction.

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