JAGS Workshop [10-14 July 2023]

Hey, JAGS users and would-be users, be warned that registration is now open for the annual JAGS workshop on probabilistic modelling for cognitive science. The tenth instalment of this workshop takes place July 10–14, 2023 in Amsterdam and online. This workshop is meant for researchers who want to learn how to apply Bayesian inference in practice. Most applications we discuss are taken from the field of cognitive science. The workshop is based on the book Bayesian Cognitive Modeling: A practical course written by Michael Lee and Eric-Jan Wagenmakers. It is followed by a shorter workshop (15-16 July) on Theory and Practice of Bayesian Hypothesis Testing.

Bayesian thinking for toddler & Bayesian probabilities for babies [book reviews]

My friend E.-J.  Wagenmakers sent me a copy of Bayesian Thinking for Toddlers, “a must-have for any toddler with even a passing interest in Ockham’s razor and the prequential principle.” E.-J. wrote the story and Viktor Beekman (of thesis’ cover fame!) drew the illustrations. The book can be read for free on https://psyarxiv.com/w5vbp/, but not purchased as publishers were not interested and self-publishing was not available at a high enough quality level. Hence, in the end, 200 copies were made as JASP material, with me being the happy owner of one of these. The story follows two young girls competing for dinosaur expertise, and being rewarded by cookies, in proportion to the probability of providing the correct answer to two dinosaur questions. Toddlers may get less enthusiastic than grown-ups about the message, but they will love the drawings (and the questions if they are into dinosaurs).

This reminded me of the Bayesian probabilities for babies book, by Chris Ferrie, which details the computation of the probability that a cookie contains candy when the first bite holds none. It is more genuinely intended for young kids, in shape and design, as can be checked on a YouTube video, with an hypothetical population of cookies (with and without candy) being the proxy for the prior distribution. I hope no baby will be traumatised from being exposed too early to the notions of prior and posterior. Only data can tell, twenty years from now, if the book induced a spike or a collapse in the proportion of Bayesian statisticians!

[Disclaimer about potential self-plagiarism: this post or an edited version will potentially appear in my Books Review section in CHANCE.

Dutch summer workshops on Bayesian modeling

Just received an email about two Bayesian workshops in Amsterdam this summer:

• “Theory and Practice of Bayesian Hypothesis Testing, A JASP Workshop”  August 22 – August 23, 2019
• “Bayesian Modeling for Cognitive Science, A JAGS and WinBUGS Workshop” August 26 – August 30

both taking place at the University of Amsterdam. And focussed on Bayesian software.

talks at CIRM with special tee-shirts

JASP, a really really fresh way to do stats