UNAM
Revista Digital Universitaria
Revista Digital Universitaria ISSN: 1607 - 6079 | Publicación mensual | 1 de noviembre de 2013 vol.14, No.11

ABSTRACT

The Development of Bayesian Statistics

Eduardo Gutiérrez Peña



2013 has been designated the International Year of Statistics to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the publication of Ars Conjectandi, written by Jacob Bernoulli and widely regarded as the origin of modern probability theory and the basis of the so-called frequentist approach to Statistics. This year also commemorates the 250th anniversary of the publication of An essay towards solving a problem in the doctrine of chances, a paper attributed to Thomas Bayes which introduced the notion of inverse probability and gave rise to the development of Bayesian Statistics. The purpose of this paper is to briefly describe such development, and to highlight the aspects that distinguish the Bayesian approach from traditional statistical methods.

Keywords: Bayes' Theorem, Decision Theory, Probability Theory, Statistical Inference, Uncertainty