Concepts

These pages explain the ideas behind binference in words and pictures, before any formula is needed. Each page answers one question and asks you to run no code. The tutorials and guides show the code, and How it works gives the mathematics.

Read the pages in this order. Each builds on the one before it.

1. Bins and likelihoods: what binference needs to know about each object.

2. Likelihoods and posteriors: why a posterior must lose its interim prior first.

3. Population and objects: the population, the objects you observed, and each object’s posterior.

4. Priors on the simplex: what a prior on the fractions says, and when it matters.

5. Selection: how a catalogue with missing objects is corrected.

6. Engines: what each engine computes, and when it is exact.

The glossary defines every term, and the notation page every symbol.