Suppose there is a school with 60% boys and 40% girls as students. The girls wear trousers or skirts in equal numbers; all boys wear trousers. An observer sees a (random) student from a distance; all the observer can see is that this student is wearing trousers. What is the probability this student is a girl? The correct answer can be computed using Bayes' theorem.
The event is that the student observed is a girl, and the event is that the student observed is wearing trousers. To compute the posterior probability , we first need to know:
- , or the probability that the student is a girl regardless of any other information. Since the observer sees a random student, meaning that all students have the same probability of being observed, and the percentage of girls among the students is 40%, this probability equals 0.4.
- , or the probability that the student is not a girl (i.e. a boy) regardless of any other information ( is the complementary event to ). This is 60%, or 0.6.
- , or the probability of the student wearing trousers given that the student is a girl. As they are as likely to wear skirts as trousers, this is 0.5.
- , or the probability of the student wearing trousers given that the student is a boy. This is given as 1.
- , or the probability of a (randomly selected) student wearing trousers regardless of any other information. Since (via the law of total probability), this is .
Given all this information, the posterior probability of the observer having spotted a girl given that the observed student is wearing trousers can be computed by substituting these values in the formula:
An intuitive way to solve this is to assume the school has N students. Number of boys = 0.6N and number of girls = 0.4N. If N is sufficiently large, total number of trouser wearers = 0.6N+ 50% of 0.4N. And number of girl trouser wearers = 50% of 0.4N. Therefore, in the population of trousers, girls are (50% of 0.4N)/(0.6N+ 50% of 0.4N) = 25%. In other words, if you separated out the group of trouser wearers, a quarter of that group will be girls. Therefore, if you see trousers, the most you can deduce is that you are looking at a single sample from a subset of students where 25% are girls. And by definition, chance of this random student being a girl is 25%. Every Bayes-theorem problem can be solved in this way.[9]
Posterior probability is a conditional probability conditioned on randomly observed data. Hence it is a random variable. For a random variable, it is important to summarize its amount of uncertainty. One way to achieve this goal is to provide a credible interval of the posterior probability.[11]
In classification, posterior probabilities reflect the uncertainty of assessing an observation to particular class, see also class-membership probabilities.
While statistical classification methods by definition generate posterior probabilities, Machine Learners usually supply membership values which do not induce any probabilistic confidence. It is desirable to transform or rescale membership values to class-membership probabilities, since they are comparable and additionally more easily applicable for post-processing.[12]
Lambert, Ben (2018). "The posterior – the goal of Bayesian inference". A Student's Guide to Bayesian Statistics. Sage. pp. 121–140. ISBN 978-1-4739-1636-4. Grossman, Jason (2005). Inferences from observations to simple statistical hypotheses (PhD thesis). University of Sydney. hdl:2123/9107. Gill, Jeff (2014). "Summarizing Posterior Distributions with Intervals". Bayesian Methods: A Social and Behavioral Sciences Approach (Third ed.). Chapman & Hall. pp. 42–48. ISBN 978-1-4398-6248-3. Press, S. James (1989). "Approximations, Numerical Methods, and Computer Programs". Bayesian Statistics : Principles, Models, and Applications. New York: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 69–102. ISBN 0-471-63729-7. Christopher M. Bishop (2006). Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning. Springer. pp. 21–24. ISBN 978-0-387-31073-2. Andrew Gelman, John B. Carlin, Hal S. Stern, David B. Dunson, Aki Vehtari and Donald B. Rubin (2014). Bayesian Data Analysis. CRC Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-1-4398-4095-5.{{cite book}}
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- Lancaster, Tony (2004). An Introduction to Modern Bayesian Econometrics. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 1-4051-1720-6.
- Lee, Peter M. (2004). Bayesian Statistics : An Introduction (3rd ed.). Wiley. ISBN 0-340-81405-5.