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;
