Summary
And that’s the main point of this chapter: to clarify the aspects of Bayesian analysis without confusing you with abstruse details such as the physics of sampling in an MCMC context. It’s my intention, and I believe the intention of quap’s author, Richard McElreath, to provide a steppingstone from an oversimplified discussion of grid approximation to an over-complex essay on multilevel regression. It’s important to understand how and why Bayesian techniques require a definition of your variables’ distribution. Then, you’re much better placed to also understand the workings of nominal variables and MCMC, the topics of the final two chapters in this book.