I wrote the following (with Aleks Jakulin) to introduce a special issue on Bayesian statistics of the journal Statistica Sinica (volume 17, 422-426). I think the article might be of interest even to dabblers in Bayes, as I try to make explicit some of the political or quasi-political attitudes floating around the world of statistical methodology.
Here's an update of whether they didn't teach Bayesian statistics in China because the "prior distribution" violated the principles of communism:
Chuanhai writes, "Zaiying Huang and I took a Bayesian course taught in the department of Mathematics at Wuhan University in 1984-1985."
Hao writes, "Interesting. I didn't learn Bayes in China and never heard of this. But it sounds possible at that time."
Hongyu: "I did not hear this, I only learned the Bayes theorem but nothing else."
Tian:
In my only "mathematical statistics" course back in college, my teacher told us the philosophical views of Bayesian statistics without much detail, but it sounded very cool.Mao's quote should be interpreted (in the most direct Chinglish way) as "the truth needs to be examined using empirical facts". So I don't it completely conflicts with the views of Bayesian statistics.
Just my 2 cents!
Finally, Xiao-Li clarifies:
It's not my teachers, but rather time (or generation!) differences. It was late 70th when I got to colleague, when the culture revolution just ended. And indeed, my teachers told me about this in reference to why they did not "dare" to study Bayes *during* culture revolution (or study anything else for that matter). By 84-85, things have changed considerably. Indeed, in 85, I took a seminar course at Fudan during which I learned empirical Bayes. And according to Don, that is why I was admitted because I wrote a personal statement on why I wanted to study empirically Bayes. Don said he was impressed because finally there was a Chinese student who did not just say how good his/her mathematics was, but of course retrospectively I have to confess that I really didn't know much about what I was talking about! :-)
Of course Xiao-Li is being modest. He understood everything, but just in Chinese, not English!
Xiao-Li confirmed that they didn't like Bayes in China (or at least in Shanghai) when he was a student. He writes:
Yes, I do [remember], and it's no laughing matter then! What happened was that the notion of "prior" contradicted one of Mao's quotation "truth comes out of empirical/practical evidence" (my translation is not perfect, but you can get the essence) -- and anything contradicts what Mao said was banned!
Do any other Chinese statisticians have stories like this?
Writing about the changing nature of science and ideology (see also here) reminds me that in grad school, Joe Schafer used to talk about the "left-wing Bayesians" and the "right-wing frequentists," which might even have been true although I can't see any scientific reason for such an alignment. I mean, I can see a lot of rationalizations (for example, Bayesian inference was more of a new, maybe risky, approach, hence perhaps would be more popular with radicals than with conservatives), but they don't seem so convincing to me.
I also remember that Xiao-Li Meng told me that in China they didn't teach Bayesian statistics because the idea of a prior distribution was contrary to Communism (since the "prior" represented the overthrown traditions, I suppose). Or maybe he was pulling my leg, I dunno.
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