February, 2003
© 2000, 2001, 2003 Scott S. Emerson, M.D., Ph.D.
The
probability that the hypothesis is true is then like the predictive value
of a positive test result
In order
to use Bayes rule, we must have some measure of the “prevalence” of
a beneficial treatment
Such a
measure is termed the “prior distribution”, because it is our estimate of
the probability of a beneficial treatment prior to
observing any data
The
probability of the hypotheses based on the data is then called the
posterior distribution