Bayesian Statistics for the Social Sciences

"Since the publication of the first edition, Bayesian statistics is, arguably, still not the norm in the formal quantitative methods training of social scientists. Typically, the only introduction that a student might have to Bayesian ideas is a brief overview of Bayes' theorem while studying probability in an introductory statistics class. This is not surprising. First, until relatively recently, it was not feasible to conduct statistical modeling from a Bayesian perspective owing to its complexity and lack of available software. Second, Bayesian statistics represents a powerful alternative to frequentist (conventional) statistics and, therefore, can be controversial, especially in the context of null hypothesis significance testing. However, over the last 20 years, or so, considerably progress has been made in the development and application of complex Bayesian statistical methods, due mostly to developments and availability of proprietary and open-source statistical software tools. And, although Bayesian statistics is not quite yet an integral part of the quantitative training of social scientists, there has been increasing interest in the application of Bayesian methods, and it is not unreasonable to say that in terms of theoretical developments and substantive applications, Bayesian statistics has arrived. Because of extensive developments in Bayesian theory and computation since the publication of the first edition of this book, there was a pressing need for a thorough update of the material to reflect new developments in Bayesian methodology and software. The basic foundations of Bayesian statistics remain more or less the same, but this second edition encompasses many new extensions"--