He’s looking for a Bayesian book

Michael Lewis wrote:

I’m teaching a course on Bayesian statistics this fall. I’d love to use your book but think it might be too difficult for the, mainly, graduate social work, sociology, and psychology students likely to enroll. What do you think?

In response, I pointed to these two books that are more accessible than mine:

Statistical Rethinking

A Student’s Guide to Bayesian Statistics.

Also, Regression and Other Stories, but that’s not really a Bayesian book, even though it has some Bayesian stuff in it.

20 thoughts on “He’s looking for a Bayesian book

  1. Another +1 for rethinking. It’s excellent for non-statisticians. Also, there is a great youtube series (actually, three of them) from McElreath’s teaching of the course. This would be a terrific supplement for students.

  2. I am slowly working my way through Lambert’s A Student’s Guide to Bayesian Statistics. on my own and finding it pretty good. Overall, I get the feeling that the overall math level is not too high for psychology student speaking as a former psychology grad student whose last calculus course was over 40 years ago and has no background in Bayesian statistics.

    Lambert has extensive on–line resources. I have only viewed some of the videos and they seem good. Overall, with a good instructor, I think it would be a good text.

    As an aside, I was reading the book while in hospital: Doctors and nurses recoiled in shock (horror?) when they saw the open book.

    • Lambert’s book is okay for expositional purposes, but his end-of-chapter problems are way too far afield for an early non-stats graduate student. Also, the later chapters are not nearly as well developed as the first half of the text. Lambert’s videos are, admittedly, excellent, however and the book has parts where it’s language shines through. But for practical implementation of the methods definitely look elsewhere.

  3. I’ve liked Kruschke’s Doing Bayesian Data Analysis. Kruschke is a psychologist so it’s definitely written from a practical approach over a math approach, although there is still some math in there. It’s written mostly for JAGS but there is some RStan as well.

  4. Perhaps a good place to start are
    (1). Statistics & Data Analysis for Financial Engineering, with R examples. 2nd Ed., David Ruppert & David S. Matterson
    Chapter 20, Bayesian Data Analysis & MCMC

    (2). Information Theory, Inference & Learning Algorithms, David J.C. MacKay,
    Chapter 37, Bayesian Inference & Sampling
    http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/itila/

    (I’ve got a small slide pack, which I’m happy to share with you. If you’re interested, just let me know).

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