Understanding When To Use Bayesian Inference
Bayesian modeling workshop at MIT SSAC 2024. March 2, 2024
Abstract:
Bayesian inference is used a lot in sports analytics. This is a practical, hands-on workshop for people wanting to spend an hour working with data and iterating over statistical models. If you're interested in how to work with sports data, have already worked with a few models and want to understand how to interpret the results, or have questions about reparametrization for MCMC efficiency, please join! We'll estimate the parameters of a simple model using Bayesian and frequentist techniques, discuss the differences, then move on to a hierarchical model that requires Bayesian inference to fit.
The example will most likely be an adjusted plus minus model applied to NBA data.
This workshop will use Stan (https://mc-stan.org), a statistical modeling language, for the model building; feel free to use Python or R for data manipulation and processing.