Bayesian prior: Difference between revisions

Bayesian prior (view source)

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 Well, the start of your life is, across the cosmic stretch of human existence, like a random draw with a sequentially numbered birth year on each ball.
-Now imagine an array of a million hypothetical barrels containing balls engraved with sequentially numbered years, beginning at the dawn of civilisation which, for arguments sake, we shall call the fall of Troy.
+Now imagine an array of a million hypothetical barrels containing balls engraved with sequentially numbered years, beginning at the dawn of civilisation which, for arguments sake, we shall call the start of te Christian era .
-The first barrel had just one ball, with the year in which Troy fell on it — the next has two:that year and the year after, and so on, up to one million years after the fall of Troy.
+The first barrel had just one ball, with 0 on it — the next has two: 0 and -3299, and so on, up to one million years after the fall of Troy.
 Let's say your birth year was the 6001st after Troy. What are the odds that your birthday would be drawn at random from each of the million barrels? We know the odds for the first 6,000: zero. None of them have a ball 6001. Across the remaining 994,000 the probabilies fall from 1/6001 to 1/1,000,000. Using the same principle as above we can see that the probability is clustered somewhere nearer the “short end” (near 6001) than the “long end” (1,000,000).