• DocumentCode
    1406296
  • Title

    No Bayesians in foxholes

  • Author

    Breiman, L.

  • Author_Institution
    California Univ., Berkeley, CA
  • Volume
    12
  • Issue
    6
  • fYear
    1997
  • Firstpage
    21
  • Lastpage
    24
  • Abstract
    In World War II, there was a saying, “there are no atheists in foxholes.” The implication was that on the front lines and under pressure, soldiers needed someone to pray to. The implication in my title is that when big, real, tough problems need to be solved, there are no Bayesians. For decades, the pages of various statistical journals have been littered with theological arguments on the virtues of the Bayesian approach versus frequentist approaches. I have no intention of continuing the debate on this level. My approach is pragmatic: which approach works best when dealing with real data in solving complex problems?
  • Keywords
    Bayes methods; probability; problem solving; statistical analysis; uncertainty handling; Bayesian methods; complex problem solving; frequentist approach; probability; statistical journals; uncertainty handling; Bayesian methods; Computational Intelligence Society; Distributed computing; Econometrics; Environmental management; Machine learning; Neural networks; Pattern recognition; Speech recognition; Statistics;
  • fLanguage
    English
  • Journal_Title
    IEEE Expert
  • Publisher
    ieee
  • ISSN
    0885-9000
  • Type

    jour

  • DOI
    10.1109/64.642956
  • Filename
    642956