
Bayesian stats book banned in China - agconway
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2011/01/i_guess_they_fi.html
======
lightoverhead
Hi Guys,

I am from China, and of course the Bayesian is taught in China. Only in the
culture revolution time, this crazy thing may happen; but it's long time ago
when Mao was alive. Now China is a modern society; of course, the Bayesian
theory is taught in schools; otherwise how could they send the spaceship to
the outer space and have the fastest super computer in the world so far. you
are smart hackers, not a bunch of kids controlled by traditional biases. As to
censorship, that's right, china has notorious censorship. I guess the author's
book must have some contents/examples regarding political issues; not Bayesian
itself was the reason for the book being censored. These days, when people
talked about censorship, I always think of wiki-leaks ......

~~~
mayank
Launching a spaceship almost certainly uses Bayesian methods for tracking
(e.g., Kalman or particle filters for position tracking), but I seriously
doubt that building a supercomputer _requires_ a dedicated use of Bayesian
statistics.

On a different note, perhaps you could be slightly less condescending in your
future posts.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Is a Kalman filter considered a type of Bayesian statistics? It doesn't seem
that way to me, but I'm not so hot at higher math.

In any case, many years ago, I worked on a radar system for a fighter plane.
Its air-to-ground radar (at the very least; this was the part I was involved
in) did indeed use a Kalman filter.

~~~
dantkz
Yes, you can describe tracking and Kalman filter using bayesian statistics.
Although, my prof said that originally it was not developed that way, but it
is easier to describe it using normal distributions as priors and likelihoods
of the position of the object being tracked.

~~~
eru
And I guess thanks to those crazy generalizing mathematicians, nowadays you
can use something like Kalman filtering with distribution other than normal
ones.

~~~
mayank
Check out particle filters if you want crazy mathematicians. Fun stuff.

------
danielhfrank
"I think that the next printing of our book should have "Banned in China"
slapped on the cover. That should be good for sales, right?"

I would buy that in a heartbeat

------
john_horton
Strange that it was banned. Maybe it had to do with the vignettes---some of
the examples are from political science (e.g., election results, polling) and
another deals with arsenic in drinking water...or maybe Hu Jintao feels the
way to deal with hierarchal data is to cluster standard errors.

------
pmichaud
Is there any way to find out the specific reason the book was not allowed to
be published?

~~~
younata
The author doesn't know, but he hypothesizes that it's because "the idea of
prior distribution [is] contrary to Communism".

~~~
disponsible
I'm pretty sure it has to do with the material of _examples_ used in the book
rather than with the actual theory.

~~~
bigfudge
Agreed. If it's Gelman many examples will be from elections, which in itself
might be enough to give the communist party in china pause.

------
est
1\. You can still buy this book in Chinese online book stores

<http://www.51eng.com/cn/bookdetail.asp?id=602871>

<http://www.51eng.com/cn/bookdetail.asp?id=602870>

2\. As a Chinese myself, I can confirm Bayesian is not taught in high school
statistics, but defintely taught in college statistics course. It's called
贝叶斯概率 in Chinese.

~~~
vorg
You can probably also download a photocopied PDF of it, as you can many
English books, as well as American TV shows and movies. Actions in China is
divided into the "official" and the "unofficial". Officially, only 20 foreign
movies a year are allowed in. "Unofficially", you can choose from hundreds at
your local DVD store, nowadays usually with 8 or 10 movies, or an entire
season of TV episodes, on the one disk, going for less than US $1. Sometimes
when they build a brick wall here, someone else will come back within a day to
smash an ugly-looking hole in it. Officially, no-one's allowed through, but
unofficially, you are.

------
michaelty
Pfft, frequentists.

~~~
dejb
1.3 Billion can't be wrong.

------
jcr
I realize the "Death to the Shaw" spelled out by the first word of every
seventeenth page was _supposed_ to be a joke, but it is not very funny in
light of the recent events of the last handful of days:

[http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-
East/2011/0105/Suicide...](http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-
East/2011/0105/Suicide-of-Iran-Shah-s-son-Alireza-Pahlavi-caps-life-of-sorrow-
in-exile)

Though I viciously dislike of all forms of royalty, they are still human
beings and they did not get a choice about being born into the nonsense.

~~~
Estragon

      I realize the "Death to the Shaw" spelled out by the first 
      word of every seventeenth page was supposed to be a joke
    

According to the Amazon search facility, none of the 26 instances of the word
"death" appear first on a page. So yeah, I think it's a joke.

------
riobard
I remember when I was taking an entry-level Economics course in China. We were
using Paul Samuelson's classic textbook “Economics”. The English version
mentioned China in some not-so-pretty examples. Apparently the translated
Chinese version replaced “China” with a generic “One country”.

------
kia
I didn't realize that things in China are that crazy...

~~~
raganwald
"Bayesian Statistics are just a theory. Teachers should be required to state
this to students and also to give equal time to alternate theories, such as
the theory of Intelligent Predetermination."

Are things in China that crazy?

~~~
jdminhbg
Unless you are forbidden to publish books on Evolution in the US, then yes,
things in China are that crazy.

~~~
raganwald
i don't mean that specific kind of crazy, but rather an overall suggestion
that humans of all extractions have a habit of arguing with the facts for
various reasons.

But yeah, since you ask, I believe that the kind of people who want
creationism taught in public schools would ban books on evolution if they
thought they could get away with it.

~~~
jdminhbg
Sure, there are people crazy enough that they would ban books on evolution,
just are there are undoubtedly people who are crazy enough to ban books on
creationism. Those are probably not even near the top of the list of crazy
things people wish they could do.

The reason that it is the case that "things are this crazy in China" is that
there is a difference between the existence of people who would probably enjoy
implementing crazy policies and the actual implementation of crazy policies.

~~~
raganwald
Oh, we're in violent agreement. The thing about the USA and Canada is that
we're constitutional democracies. That doesn't mean that as people we're any
less crazy than places with a different system, but our constitutions act as a
brake slowing down implementation of crazy policies and providing a kind of
"undo" when things go wrong.

As we saw in the FLQ Crisis and again during the G20 summit, Canadians can
lock thousands of people up without due process of law. As we saw in Kansas,
certain Americans can ban the teaching of established science in the
classroom.

But our system at least makes these things aberrations and provides dissenters
a way to rectify the problems in the courts.'

edit: I think what I'm trying to say is "Our system provides us with an undo,
but it's only good when we remain vigilant against craziness. If we become
complacent and assume that we as people are somehow too intelligent or too
morally centered to do crazy things, wham, we do crazy things too."

~~~
keyist
"But our system at least makes these things aberrations and provides
dissenters a way to rectify the problems in the courts."

What a lot of people don't get when they try to tu quoque US/Canada/etc on
particular events is that their protection of essential liberties is defense
in depth.

If a book was banned:

\- due process means that this incident can be taken to court

\- freedom of press means the mass media can inform others of what has
happened

\- freedom of speech means you can raise awareness about the banning and
denounce the agencies responsible

\- with freedom of assembly, those who want the ban overturned can take to the
streets and protest

These freedoms are mutually supportive -- abuse of any aspect would be
mitigated by the presence of the rest.

~~~
raganwald
V. true. Sadly, those who prefer a tyranny seem to have figured this out and
are assaulting all of the freedoms you've listed. I leave it as an exercise
for the reader to determine which of these liberties are currently under
assault.

