Bayes’ Rule in Real World Scenarios
Bayes’ Rule in the context of information cascades, like we learned in class, is natural and logical at its core — however, we learned this concept with respect to very specific scenarios. This article discussing Bayes’ Rule introduces its core idea: we, as humans, tend to update our thoughts/beliefs on certain ideas/actions/concepts as we learn new information/get new evidence. In particular, the article focuses on the application of Bayes’ Rule in the context of job hunting. Before getting into the example, the author makes sure to state the goals of the article: to convince the audience about the power of Bayes’ Rule and to introduce the audience to a “general framework” (using Bayes’ Rule) on how to improve overall decision making. The article goes on to describe a hypothetical scenario in which a person is actively searching for a new job and discusses the person’s mindset and decision making — specifically identifying initial assumptions the person makes about the job(s) he is searching for. Thus, the overall function of Bayes’ Rule is easily applied in this context as the person updates his job preferences and beliefs based on his own assumptions as well as the evidence that comes from other public sources such as online company scores/ratings.
This article does a great job of communicating the overall convenience and intuitive nature of Bayes’ Rule and how we can utilize this Bayesian form of thinking in order to improve our decision making in any aspect of our lives. Rather than simply act on pure beliefs or “gut feelings,” actively analyzing supporting evidence and taking it into account for further decision making is the most logical form of thinking and observing the world around us as we can have a more realistic and logical expectation for any result we are seeking/wondering about, no matter the context. For example, in the article, the person in the example updated his beliefs on a certain job based on how well a certain company was reviewed online. Adding this evidence to his initial assumption about the job/company, then subsequently analyzing it through the use of Bayes’ Rule, allowed him to have a clearer idea of just how good the job really was and how much he actually wanted to pursue the job. This article does an amazing job of highlighting the use of Bayesian reasoning in everyday life and has taught me that, even if I was using it subconsciously, Bayes’ Rule in the context of everyday decision making is extremely natural and intuitive — so much so that it not only allows us to consider multiple real-life variables, but also allows us to actively update our assumptions given relevant information — a skill that is vital for just about any real world setting and situation.
Source: https://towardsdatascience.com/bayes-rule-for-job-hunt-b2eca4d3b98