On Some Recently Discovered Manuscripts of Thomas Bayes

Bellhouse, David R.

doi:10.1006/hmat.2002.2344

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 9 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…8 After the discovery of some of Bayes's unpublished manuscripts made by Dale (1986), the connection was viewed as plausible, but no conclusive evidence was presented. See also Bellhouse (2002Bellhouse ( , 2007 and Stigler (2013) with respect to this possible connection. In Allen (1999), Richard Allen, Hartley's biographer, also conjectures about a possible relationship, but did not present a conclusive answer.…”

Section: Context: Bernoulli De Moivre and Hartleymentioning

confidence: 99%

Mr. Bayes and the classics: a suggested interpretation

Diniz¹,

Bellhouse²

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The main hypothesis about Thomas Bayes's intentions to write his famous Essay on probability is that he wanted to refute the arguments of David Hume against the reliability of the occurrence of miracles, published in 1748. In this paper we argue that it was not Bayes's intention to rebut Hume but that his interest on the "inverse problem" came about as result of his study of the second edition of Abraham De Moivre's book, The Doctrine of Chances, published in 1738.A possible communication of Bayes's breakthrough might have annoyed De Moivre, leading to a response written for Bayes in the third edition of De Moivre's book, published in 1756. Among other points, the response claims that De Moivre was the first to solve the mentioned inverse problem. Under this perspective Richard Price's letter, written as preface to Bayes's essay, has a new interpretation, appearing also as a defense of Bayes premiership on a satisfactory or proper solution.

show abstract

Section: Context: Bernoulli De Moivre and Hartleymentioning

confidence: 99%

Mr. Bayes and the classics: a suggested interpretation

Diniz¹,

Bellhouse²

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Yet later, Gosset would gladly assume the mantle of frequentist methods advocated by R. A. Fisher, although he, like most other statisticians, found issues on which he and Fisher disagreed quite strongly. 15 4 From Inverse Probability to Frequentism and the Rise of Subjective Probability Fienberg and Lazar (60) provide support for this interpretation of Gosset as using inverse probability. A reviewer of an earlier version of this paper has argued that Gosset was simply not clear about these matters and that his later acceptance of Fisher's interpretation of inference was not foreordained.…”

Section: Bayes' Theoremmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…10 An appendix to the paper, written by Price, also deals with the related problem of predicting the result of a new observation. Bellhouse (15) suggests that Price contributed more to Bayes' essay than others have hitherto suggested, perhaps even piecing it together from a number of "initially seemingly unrelated results" to form a coherent whole. Both Bellhouse and Stigler have also suggested that the famous portrait of Bayes that adorns a myriad of publications about him and all things Bayesian may actually not be Bayes at all (see (122))!…”

Section: Bayes' Theoremmentioning

confidence: 99%

When did Bayesian inference become "Bayesian"?

Fienberg¹

2006

Bayesian Anal.

218

144

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While Bayes' theorem has a 250-year history, and the method of inverse probability that flowed from it dominated statistical thinking into the twentieth century, the adjective "Bayesian" was not part of the statistical lexicon until relatively recently. This paper provides an overview of key Bayesian developments, beginning with Bayes' posthumously published 1763 paper and continuing up through approximately 1970, including the period of time when "Bayesian" emerged as the label of choice for those who advocated Bayesian methods.

show abstract

“…The Doctrine of Fluxions (Bayes, 1736) is a work on the foundations of fluxions or differential calculus and is not a work of geometry. I (Bellhouse, 2002) argued that Bayes' "test work" for entry into the Royal Society was an unpublished paper on the topic of trinomial divisors, a paper that uses geometrical arguments to obtain its results. The undated paper, copied in Stanhope's hand but attributed to Bayes, is among the Stanhope papers in the Centre for Kentish Studies.…”

Section: Election To the Royal Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Reverend Thomas Bayes, FRS: A Biography to Celebrate the Tercentenary of His Birth

Bellhouse¹

2004

Statist. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Thomas Bayes, from whom Bayes theorem takes its name, was probably born in 1701, so the year 2001 marked the 300th anniversary of his birth. This biography was written to celebrate this anniversary. The current sketch of his life includes his family background and education, as well as his scientific and theological work. In contrast to some, but not all, biographies of Bayes, the current biography is an attempt to cover areas beyond Bayes' scientific work. When commenting on the writing of scientific biography, Pearson [(1978). The History of Statistics in the 17th and 18th Centuries. . .. Charles Griffin and Company, London] stated, "it is impossible to understand a man's work unless you understand something of his character and unless you understand something of his environment. And his environment means the state of affairs social and political of his own age." The intention here is to follow this general approach to biography.There is very little primary source material on Bayes and his work. For example, only three of his letters and a notebook containing some sketches of his own work, almost all unpublished, as well as notes on the work of others are known to have survived. Neither the letters nor the notebook is dated, and only one of the letters can be dated accurately from internal evidence. This biography contains new information about Bayes. In particular, among the papers of the 2nd Earl Stanhope, letters and papers of Bayes have been uncovered that previously were not known to exist. The letters indirectly confirm the centrality of Stanhope in Bayes' election to the Royal Society. They also provide evidence that Bayes was part of a network of mathematicians initially centered on Stanhope. In addition, the letters shed light on Bayes' work in infinite series.

show abstract

On Some Recently Discovered Manuscripts of Thomas Bayes

Cited by 12 publications

References 9 publications

Mr. Bayes and the classics: a suggested interpretation

Mr. Bayes and the classics: a suggested interpretation

When did Bayesian inference become "Bayesian"?

The Reverend Thomas Bayes, FRS: A Biography to Celebrate the Tercentenary of His Birth

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About