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Thomas Bayes

b. c. 1701 d. 7 April 1761

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Statisticians of the Centuries

Abstract

The problem of passing from a population to the properties of a sample was one of the first studied in probability. Thomas Bayes, a nonconformist minister, was the first to solve the inverse problem of passage from sample to population, using ideas that are widely used today.

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Bibliography

  • The original paper appeared in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1763). 53, 370–418.

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  • There is a reprint in Biometrika (1958). 45, 296–315.

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  • An illuminating commentary on it is provided by S.M. Stigler (1982). Thomas Bayes’s Bayesian inference. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 145, 250–258.

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  • The most complete biography is provided by A.W.F. Edwards in the latest edition of The Dictionary of National Biography.

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  • Two recent books on modern Bayesian methods are A. O’Hagan (1994). Bayesian Inference. Vol. 2B of Kendall’s Advanced Theory of Statistics. Edward Arnold, London; John Wiley, New York.

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  • J.M. Bernardo and A.F.M. Smith (1994). Bayesian Theory. John Wiley, Chichester.

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  • The latter is part of a forthcoming 3-volume work and has an extensive bibliography. The modern “classic” is B. de Finetti (1974/5). Theory of Probability. John Wiley, London, in 2 volumes, translated from the Italian.

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  • C.G.G. Aitken (1995). Statistics and the Evaluation of Evidence for Forensic Scientists. John Wiley, Chichester, deals with legal applications.

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  • D.V. Lindley (1985). Making Decisions. John Wiley, London, extends Bayesian ideas to decision-making.

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Authors
  1. D. V. Lindley
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematical Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia

    C. C. Heyde

  2. Department of Statistics, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA

    C. C. Heyde

  3. School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

    E. Seneta

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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Lindley, D.V. (2001). Thomas Bayes. In: Heyde, C.C., Seneta, E., Crépel, P., Fienberg, S.E., Gani, J. (eds) Statisticians of the Centuries. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0179-0_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0179-0_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-95283-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-0179-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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