So far it seems to be only the two of us, which seems rather surprising. In probabilistic terms, I was assigning a significant probability to receiving N>>1 favorable replies to the suggestion above.
I’m not sure yet how I should update on the observation of only one taker. One hypothesis is that the Open Thread isn’t an effective way to float such suggestions, so I could consider a top-level post instead. Another is that all LWers are much more advanced than we are and consider Jaynes’ book elementary. What other hypotheses might I be missing ?
That within the set of those interested in studying Jaynes the set of those interested in studying Jaynes through a virtual book study group is small. Some people find virtual study groups ineffective. That’d be my reason for not responding.
If you find virtual study groups ineffective, then—ineffective compared to what ?
To study some material, two things are quite useful: access to the material, and access to someone who can help you over difficult spots in the material. Even if you intend to study alone, having the latter as an option can reasonably be expected to increase your chances. (Modulo the objection “I’ll expect too much help from outside and that’ll degrade my learning”, which I could understand.)
In this case Jaynes’ book is a free PDF; on the other hand, the LW readership probably doesn’t have formal access to a formal teacher for this material, I’d expect occasions to meet others interested in it IRL are fairly rare.
Given all this I’d still expect more of a response than has been the case so far.
I’d like to study Jaynes, although it’s not on the top of my priority list—and I’m under the impression that the free PDF has been taken down at the moment.
If you find virtual study groups ineffective, then—ineffective compared to what ?
Wasn’t making a comparison, actually—just saying that joining a group of people online to study something hasn’t actually led to me studying in the past. Ineffective compared to taking a course, I suppose.
The PDF may’ve been taken down by whomever was hosting it, but it’s easily found: http://omega.albany.edu:8008/JaynesBook.html for example, to say nothing of all the download sites or P2P sources you could use.
(Personally, my problem is that Jaynes is difficult, my calculus weak, and I have no particular application to study using it. It’s like programming—you learn best trying to solve problems, not just trying to memorize what map is or whatever. Even though I have the book, I haven’t gone past chapter 2.)
So far it seems to be only the two of us, which seems rather surprising. In probabilistic terms, I was assigning a significant probability to receiving N>>1 favorable replies to the suggestion above.
I am quite interested but I know from experience that I study would seem too much like work. I would probably stop doing it until I actually needed to expand my skills for some purpose practical or otherwise.
That being said, I would quite probably follow along with such a group and almost certainly get sucked into answering questions people posed. That changes it from ‘homework’ to ‘curious problem someone put up and I can’t resist solving’.
I may be the only one of my kind here, but I know absolutely nothing about probabilistic reasoning (I am envious of all you Bayesians and assume you’re right about everything. Down with the frequentists!); thus, I think Jaynes would be too far over my head. Maybe there’s a dichotomy between philosophy / psychology / highschool Lesswrongers and computer science / physics / math Lesswrongers that make the group of people at Jaynes-level a small group.
You’re not the only one. I’m not bad at math and logic, but very rusty, and almost completely uneducated when it comes to probabilities. (Oddly enough, the junior high school I went to did offer a probabilities course—to the students who were in the track below me. We who tested highest were given trigonometry a year earlier, instead.)
You might be right about the divide, too—I’m more in the former category than the latter, for all that I’m a programmer, and it doesn’t seem like I’d have much opportunity to use the math even if I took the time to learn it, so there’s very little motivation for me to do so.
Yes! I’ve been wanting a virtual place to help me learn probabilistic reasoning in general; a group focued on Jaynes would be a good start.
So far it seems to be only the two of us, which seems rather surprising. In probabilistic terms, I was assigning a significant probability to receiving N>>1 favorable replies to the suggestion above.
I’m not sure yet how I should update on the observation of only one taker. One hypothesis is that the Open Thread isn’t an effective way to float such suggestions, so I could consider a top-level post instead. Another is that all LWers are much more advanced than we are and consider Jaynes’ book elementary. What other hypotheses might I be missing ?
That within the set of those interested in studying Jaynes the set of those interested in studying Jaynes through a virtual book study group is small. Some people find virtual study groups ineffective. That’d be my reason for not responding.
OK. Who wants to study Jaynes—at all ?
If you find virtual study groups ineffective, then—ineffective compared to what ?
To study some material, two things are quite useful: access to the material, and access to someone who can help you over difficult spots in the material. Even if you intend to study alone, having the latter as an option can reasonably be expected to increase your chances. (Modulo the objection “I’ll expect too much help from outside and that’ll degrade my learning”, which I could understand.)
In this case Jaynes’ book is a free PDF; on the other hand, the LW readership probably doesn’t have formal access to a formal teacher for this material, I’d expect occasions to meet others interested in it IRL are fairly rare.
Given all this I’d still expect more of a response than has been the case so far.
I’d like to someday, but unfortunately not now.
:-/I’d like to study Jaynes, although it’s not on the top of my priority list—and I’m under the impression that the free PDF has been taken down at the moment.
Wasn’t making a comparison, actually—just saying that joining a group of people online to study something hasn’t actually led to me studying in the past. Ineffective compared to taking a course, I suppose.
The PDF may’ve been taken down by whomever was hosting it, but it’s easily found: http://omega.albany.edu:8008/JaynesBook.html for example, to say nothing of all the download sites or P2P sources you could use.
There’re more than that, over time anyway: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/etjaynesstudy/
(Personally, my problem is that Jaynes is difficult, my calculus weak, and I have no particular application to study using it. It’s like programming—you learn best trying to solve problems, not just trying to memorize what
mapis or whatever. Even though I have the book, I haven’t gone past chapter 2.)I am quite interested but I know from experience that I study would seem too much like work. I would probably stop doing it until I actually needed to expand my skills for some purpose practical or otherwise.
That being said, I would quite probably follow along with such a group and almost certainly get sucked into answering questions people posed. That changes it from ‘homework’ to ‘curious problem someone put up and I can’t resist solving’.
Yes, probably it deserves a top-level post, or going outside of this community and advertsing more widely.
Perhaps there are more, but they just don’t want to signal that they are newbies at probabilistic reasoning.
I may be the only one of my kind here, but I know absolutely nothing about probabilistic reasoning (I am envious of all you Bayesians and assume you’re right about everything. Down with the frequentists!); thus, I think Jaynes would be too far over my head. Maybe there’s a dichotomy between philosophy / psychology / highschool Lesswrongers and computer science / physics / math Lesswrongers that make the group of people at Jaynes-level a small group.
You’re not the only one. I’m not bad at math and logic, but very rusty, and almost completely uneducated when it comes to probabilities. (Oddly enough, the junior high school I went to did offer a probabilities course—to the students who were in the track below me. We who tested highest were given trigonometry a year earlier, instead.)
You might be right about the divide, too—I’m more in the former category than the latter, for all that I’m a programmer, and it doesn’t seem like I’d have much opportunity to use the math even if I took the time to learn it, so there’s very little motivation for me to do so.