History
Bayes' theorem was named after the Reverend Thomas Bayes (1701–61), who studied how to compute a distribution for the probability parameter of a binomial distribution (in modern terminology). His friend Richard Price edited and presented this work in 1763, after Bayes' death, as An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances. The French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace reproduced and extended Bayes' results in 1774, apparently quite unaware of Bayes' work. Stephen Stigler suggested in 1983 that Bayes' theorem was discovered by Nicholas Saunderson some time before Bayes. However, this interpretation has been disputed.
Stephen Fienberg describes the evolution from "inverse probability" at the time of Bayes and Laplace, a term still used by Harold Jeffreys (1939), to "Bayesian" in the 1950s. Ironically, Ronald A. Fisher introduced the "Bayesian" label in a derogatory sense.
Read more about this topic: Bayes' Theorem
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)