You really did not answer my question. Do you prefer choice 1 or choice 2?
Sincerely,
Rich
At 05:25 PM 6/23/98 -0500, Kevin Korb wrote:
>Rich et al.,
>
>> 1) Abandon tradition and write P(X). Indeed this random variable usage may
>> not be all that traditional anyway. It seems it may be something started by
>> us fairly recently. Looking in other (I admit only the few I own) texts, it
>> is used only for real-valued functions in Fisherian texts.
>
>I suspect this is wrong (depending on what you consider recent).
>LJ Savage wrote in 1954 Fnd of Statistics (making no distinction
>between real & discrete):
>
>"Experts are fairly well agreed on the following definition. A random
>variable is a function x attaching a value x(s) in some set X to
>every s in a set S on which a probability measure P is defined."
>
>No doubt, he was unduly optimistic.
>
>> 2) Stick with formally defining X as a random variable, but then note that
>> in Bayesian applications that this is only true implicitly, that actually
>> we indentify X and its values directly. So in practice X becomes more of an
>> actual variable, and we say things like `manipulating X'.
>
>It seems to me unobjectionable to talk about either manipulating variables or
>manipulating functions. If my dog's barking behavior
>(f=doggie-barking-behavior-generator) is a function of its input, I can
>manipulate it by presenting it with the right inputs. And, indeed,
>I do.
>
>Regards, Kevin
>
>