A Free Course Book on Bayesian Inference: [4.] Measuring Probability and Coherence

Since 2017, Dora Matzke and I have been teaching the master course “Bayesian Inference for Psychological Science”. Over the years, the syllabus for this course matured into a book (and an accompanying book of answers) titled “Bayesian inference from the ground up: The theory of common sense”. The current plan is to finish the book in the next few months,…

read more

A Free Course Book on Bayesian Inference: [3.] The Rules of Probability

Since 2017, Dora Matzke and I have been teaching the master course “Bayesian Inference for Psychological Science”. Over the years, the syllabus for this course matured into a book (and an accompanying book of answers) titled “Bayesian inference from the ground up: The theory of common sense”. The current plan is to finish the book in the next few months,…

read more

A Free Course Book on Bayesian Inference: [2.] The Nature of Probability

Since 2017, Dora Matzke and I have been teaching the master course “Bayesian Inference for Psychological Science”. Over the years, the syllabus for this course matured into a book (and an accompanying book of answers) titled “Bayesian inference from the ground up: The theory of common sense”. The current plan is to finish the book in the next few months,…

read more

A Free Course Book on Bayesian Inference: [1.] Preface, Synopsis, JASP

Since 2017, Dora Matzke and I have been teaching the master course “Bayesian Inference for Psychological Science”. Over the years, the syllabus for this course matured into a book (and an accompanying book of answers) titled “Bayesian inference from the ground up: The theory of common sense”. The current plan is to finish the book in the next few months,…

read more

The Tomb of Thomas Bayes in 2023

In July this year, my friend and long-term collaborator Michael Lee visited the grave of Thomas Bayes at Bunhill Fields in London. When Michael showed me the photo I was shocked. This is what Bayes’ tomb looks like in 2023: Overgrown with moss and generally in a sorry state, this is hardly a worthy monument to the man who pioneered…

read more

Coming Up: A Free Course Book on Bayesian Inference

Since 2017, Dora Matzke and I have been teaching the master course “Bayesian Inference for Psychological Science”. Over the years, the syllabus for this course matured into a book (and an accompanying book of answers) titled “Bayesian inference from the ground up: The theory of common sense”. The current plan is to finish the book in the next few months,…

read more

The Psi of Eros

This is a DeepL-assisted translation of an article for the Dutch magazine Skepter (Wagenmakers, 2023). I am grateful to the editor, Hans van Maanen, for his efforts in rewriting my original draft. The painting is a self-portrait by René Magritte called ‘La Clairvoyance’ (1936 – proposed by van Maanen to accompany the article).  TLDR;  Can psychology students really anticipate the appearance…

read more

Order-restrictions in JAGS: Five Methods Fail, One Method Succeeds

TL;DR When implementing order-restrictions in JAGS, only the “ones trick” appears to yield the correct result. Consider two unknown chances, $\theta_1$ and $\theta_2$, that are assigned independent beta priors: $\theta_1 \sim \text{beta}(1,1)$ and $\theta_2 \sim \text{beta}(1,1)$. Let’s visualize the joint posterior by executing JAGS code (Plummer, 2003) and plotting the samples that are obtained from the MCMC algorithm. This is…

read more