Skip to main content
Cross Validated

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

2
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the nice explanation. I find the difference between ignorance about a parameter value and a prior interesting and think that this what I was missing but I cannot grasp the huge difference yet. Can you maybe elaborate? How is ignorance about a parameter value defined in comparison to ignorance about a prior? If I truly have no prior information about something shouldn’t I be ignorant about the prior? $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 8, 2018 at 18:19
  • $\begingroup$ @JulianKarls: Well, there can't really be ignorance about the prior distribution at all, since your prior is the specification of your "ignorant" prior beliefs about the parameter. If you believe a priori that two parameter values are equally likely then you are ignorant about the parameter value, but you have specified the prior probabilities (i.e., you are not ignorant about those probabilities). It is the difference between ignorance about the value of a random variable, and ignorance about the probability of an outcome of a random variable. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 8, 2018 at 22:41