Natural Selection Resembles Bayesian Inference
The analogy is mathematically precise, and fascinating. In rough terms, it says that the process of natural selection resembles the process of Bayesian inference. A population of organisms can be thought of as having various 'hypotheses' about how to survive—each hypothesis corresponding to a different allele. (Roughly, an allele is one of several alternative versions of a gene.) In each successive generation, the process of natural selection modifies the proportion of organisms having each hypothesis, according to Bayes' rule! Now let's be more precise:
Bayes' rule says if we start with a 'prior probability' for some hypothesis to be true, divide it by the probability that some observation is made, then multiply by the 'conditional probability' that this observation will be made given that the hypothesis is true, we'll get the 'posterior probability' that the hypothesis is true given that the observation is made.
Notes:
Folksonomies: evolution biology bayesian
Taxonomies:
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/science/mathematics/statistics (0.354091)
/science (0.254250)
Keywords:
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Conditional probability (0.685735): dbpedia | freebase
Bayesian probability (0.644155): dbpedia | freebase
Posterior probability (0.527599): dbpedia | freebase
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Statistical inference (0.445175): dbpedia | freebase
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Bayesian inference (0.402358): dbpedia | freebase
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Edwin Thompson Jaynes (0.331241): dbpedia | freebase | yago
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Prosecutor\'s fallacy (0.318460): dbpedia | freebase | yago
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Minimum description length (0.306045): dbpedia | freebase
Gene (0.302671): dbpedia | freebase
Evolution (0.295408): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Event (0.293422): dbpedia | freebase
Thomas Bayes (0.287605): dbpedia | freebase | yago
Control theory (0.285869): dbpedia | freebase
Philosophy of science (0.284700): dbpedia | freebase
Bayesian spam filtering (0.281893): dbpedia | freebase
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