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by xelxebar 844 days ago
Jaynes is great, but The Logic of Science is a bit rough around the edges, with lots of errata. Jaynes died when the book was really just a very rough draft plus notes. Bretthorst had to go in and turn it into something publishable, not an enviable task by any means.

Here's a list of errata and commentary, collected by a fan: https://ksvanhorn.com/bayes/jaynes/index.html.

1 comments

Thank you for this!

I had spotted some errors here and there, but it's always good to have them in one place.

I think we are all in the same wagon when I say that even with those rough edges Jaynes' book is kind of a transformative experience for everyone who has already been "conditioned" to other Probability texts.

For example, for me Feller is a great intro to "start working with Probability," but Jaynes is where one starts actually "thinking in Probability."

The whole Maximum Entropy thing was mind blowing for me.