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We define the information threshold as the point of maximum curvature in the prior vs. posterior Bayesian curve, both of which are described as a function of the true positive and negative rates of the classification system in question. The…
Prior probabilities of clinical hypotheses are not systematically used for clinical trial design yet, due to a concern that poor priors may lead to poor decisions. To address this concern, a conservative approach to Bayesian trial design is…
This work studies sequential social learning (also known as Bayesian observational learning), and how private communication can enable agents to avoid herding to the wrong action/state. Starting from the seminal BHW (Bikhchandani,…
We introduce the framework of Bayesian relative belief that directly evaluates whether or not the experimental data at hand supports a given hypothesis regarding a quantum system by directly comparing the prior and posterior probabilities…
Learning a privacy-preserving model from sensitive data which are distributed across multiple devices is an increasingly important problem. The problem is often formulated in the federated learning context, with the aim of learning a single…
This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, we develop a new information theory, in which it is not a coincidence that information and physical entropy share the same mathematical formula. It is an adaptation of mind to help search…
Collective intelligence is believed to underly the remarkable success of human society. The formation of accurate shared beliefs is one of the key components of human collective intelligence. How are accurate shared beliefs formed in groups…
Making evidence based decisions requires data. However for real-world applications, the privacy of data is critical. Using synthetic data which reflects certain statistical properties of the original data preserves the privacy of the…
We study the stability of posterior predictive inferences to the specification of the likelihood model and perturbations of the data generating process. In modern big data analyses, useful broad structural judgements may be elicited from…
Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT) is a probabilistic model of a learner's state of mastery corresponding to a knowledge component. It considers the learner's state of mastery as a "hidden" or latent binary variable and updates this state…
Statistical models typically capture uncertainties in our knowledge of the corresponding real-world processes, however, it is less common for this uncertainty specification to capture uncertainty surrounding the values of the inputs to the…
Possibility theory offers a framework where both Lehmann's "preferential inference" and the more productive (but less cautious) "rational closure inference" can be represented. However, there are situations where the second inference does…
In this paper I empirically investigate prediction markets for binary options. Advocates of prediction markets have suggested that asset prices are consistent estimators of the "true" probability of a state of the world being realized. I…
Integrating information gained by observing others via Social Bayesian Learning can be beneficial for an agent's performance, but can also enable population wide information cascades that perpetuate false beliefs through the agent…
Bayesian models of cognition hypothesize that human brains make sense of data by representing probability distributions and applying Bayes' rule to find the best explanation for available data. Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying…
In settings like vaccination registries, individuals act after observing others, and the resulting public records can expose private information. We study privacy-preserving sequential learning, where agents add endogenous noise to their…
Current developments in the statistics community suggest that modern statistics education should be structured holistically, that is, by allowing students to work with real data and to answer concrete statistical questions, but also by…
A family of models of individual discrete choice are constructed by means of statistical averaging of choices made by a subject in a reinforcement learning process, where the subject has short, k-term memory span. The choice probabilities…
Many experimental studies report that economics students tend to act more selfishly than students of other disciplines, a finding that received widespread public and professional attention. Two main explanations that the existing literature…
The idea that the brain is a probabilistic (Bayesian) inference machine, continuously trying to figure out the hidden causes of its inputs, has become very influential in cognitive (neuro)science over recent decades. Here I present a…