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Frequentist and Bayesian inference
Shykhmanter, Dmytro ; Vilikus, Ondřej (advisor) ; Hebák, Petr (referee)
The thesis provides both theoretical and practical comparison of frequentist and Bayesian methods of statistical inference. Comparing of these two concepts begins with describing the philosophy of probability theory. Also is introduced the problem of determinism as well as three main probability interpretations. Statistical inference is a process of making general conclusions based on a given evidence. The frequentist statistics uses the observed data as an only evidence for its conclusions, while the Bayesian one is based on an idea that the subjective degree of belief can be also used for these purposes. Why should one disregard to his experience, knowledge or even intuition? Often happens that results of statistical data analysis are useless in sense that they come out not as it is expected. This situation is illustrated when there are a number of ski resorts which are graded on five star scale. If we look to the top ten, we will find that some of those should not belong there, though the data says they do. Generally the top positions are occupied by the objects with fewer reviews, while those with more reviews get lower average score. Bayesian data analysis methods enable to eliminate this kind of problem. Based on a prior information about the whole data set, every ski resort would get a fair score and as the result, the model would better represent the quality of the each resort based on the respondents' reviews.
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