2014-05-23
Explanation
The Joke
A man proposes a "Bayesian drinking game" to his friends: you start with a theory of how much you should drink, then you drink that much, then you update your theory. After having three drinks, he updates his theory to "zero drinks is better." A news ticker at the bottom then reports: "In lighter news, everyone in a department of statistical modeling is dead."
The Humor
The joke satirizes Bayesian reasoning -- a statistical method where you update your beliefs based on new evidence -- by applying it to alcohol consumption. The irony is that Bayesian updating is supposed to make your decisions more rational over time, but when applied to drinking, it leads to disaster. After only three drinks, the man overcorrects his theory to say zero drinks is best, but the news ticker reveals that an entire department of statistical modelers has died, presumably from playing this game. The implication is that people who are experts in Bayesian statistics would take the game too seriously (or update their priors in ways that lead them to drink far too much), with fatal consequences.
References
- Bayesian inference: A method of statistical inference in which Bayes" theorem is used to update the probability of a hypothesis as more evidence becomes available. It involves starting with a "prior" belief and updating it based on observed data to form a "posterior" belief.