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A review by davorko97
Everything Is Predictable: How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World by Tom Chivers
3.0
I honestly don't know what to think about this book. First of all, I am not really engrossed in the statistics world, so I mostly read this book as a newbie without any prior knowledge about the Frequentists and Bayesians sides.
It even seems a little off for me to be reviewing it, because I fear I would not give it a valid review and it feels somehow wrong to give it a 3 star rating, just because I didn't understand the book so clearly. However, the whole point of Bayes is to take into account our own priors and experiences, so I will stand on my opinion.
The book was hard. Really hard to read, a lot of information to crunch, data to process, backstories to understand. The author sometimes went off on some biographical backgrounds regarding big key players in statistics and sometimes one might say philosophical rants.
While I appreciate some insights of using Bayes in all sorts of situations, from science to everyday life, I do not like how the book tried to push Bayes down the reader's throat.
Of course, a book dedicated to Bayes is going to try to do exactly that, however it still feels off-putting, I find the idea that Bayes can be used on every single aspect of life straight preposterous. If all you got is a hammer, then treating everything as a nail is a dangerous way of thinking. I might delve too deep now, but shouldn't the very concept of Bayes insinuate that purely thinking in Bayes can be potential wrong and not cover correctly all the scenarios.
On the other hand, I could just be plainly wrong and failing to understand the book, after all I wasn't even able to correctly calculate at first the probability of a parent having two boys, if at least one of them is a boy (until I used Bayes on it). Either way, the book does make you pause and think, that is something which I very much appreciated.
It even seems a little off for me to be reviewing it, because I fear I would not give it a valid review and it feels somehow wrong to give it a 3 star rating, just because I didn't understand the book so clearly. However, the whole point of Bayes is to take into account our own priors and experiences, so I will stand on my opinion.
The book was hard. Really hard to read, a lot of information to crunch, data to process, backstories to understand. The author sometimes went off on some biographical backgrounds regarding big key players in statistics and sometimes one might say philosophical rants.
While I appreciate some insights of using Bayes in all sorts of situations, from science to everyday life, I do not like how the book tried to push Bayes down the reader's throat.
Of course, a book dedicated to Bayes is going to try to do exactly that, however it still feels off-putting, I find the idea that Bayes can be used on every single aspect of life straight preposterous. If all you got is a hammer, then treating everything as a nail is a dangerous way of thinking. I might delve too deep now, but shouldn't the very concept of Bayes insinuate that purely thinking in Bayes can be potential wrong and not cover correctly all the scenarios.
On the other hand, I could just be plainly wrong and failing to understand the book, after all I wasn't even able to correctly calculate at first the probability of a parent having two boys, if at least one of them is a boy (until I used Bayes on it). Either way, the book does make you pause and think, that is something which I very much appreciated.