The Bayesian philosophy of probability

From: Mitchell Porter (mitchtemporarily@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu May 29 2003 - 04:34:37 MDT


Something about "Bayesianism" has long puzzled me. On one hand,
we have all the formulae for conditional probability. On the other hand,
there is the debate between "frequentists" and "Bayesians" over the
*meaning* of probability:

  Bernoulli, in 1713, recognized the distinction between two
  definitions of probability: (1) probability as a measure of the
  plausibility of an event with incomplete knowlege, and (2)
  probability as the long-run frequency of occurrence of an event in a
  sequence of repeated (sometimes hypothetical) experiments. The
  former (1) is a general definition of probability adopted by the
  Bayesians. The latter (2) is called the "frequentist" view,
  sometimes called the "classical", "orthodox" or "sampling theory"
  view.
  --http://www.amara.com/ftpstuff/bayesian.txt

What I'd like to know is: what do the two Bayesianisms have
to do with each other? What is the connection between
an enthusiasm for conditional probabilities, and a belief that
probabilities are subjective?

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