Bayesian probability represents a level of certainty relating to a potential outcome or idea. This is in contrast to a frequentist probability that represents the frequency with which a particular outcome will occur over any number of trials.

An event with Bayesian probability of .6 (or 60%) should be interpreted as stating "With confidence 60%, this event contains the true outcome", whereas a frequentist interpretation would view it as stating "Over 100 trials, we should observe event X approximately 60 times."

The difference is more apparent when discussing ideas. A frequentist will not assign probability to an idea; either it is true or false and it cannot be true 6 times out of 10.

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See also

Priors
Bayesian
Bayes' theorem
Mind projection fallacy

External links

BIPS: Bayesian Inference for the Physical Sciences
Maximum entropy thermodynamics
What is Bayesian statistics?

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