Kathryn Blackmond Laskey wrote: > >There is another option: sometimes prior probabilities are based on > >frequencies > > > >and sometimes they are based exclusively or principally on something like > >"assumptions." > > Excuse me, but even when prior probabilities are based on frequencies, the > use of these frequencies is based on [certain] assumptions [that Kathy > describes].. Dear Kathy & Other Friends, By saying that prior probabilities can be based on frequencies I did not mean to say or intimate that frequencies somehow speak for themselves or somehow tell us by themselves when they should be used to specify a prior probability. (I have even made this precise point in print, at length!) So in this sense I entirely and wholeheartedly agree with Kathy. (Conversely, I think that "assumptions" are often in part based on, or extracted from, observed frequencies.) Peter Tillers
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