50th Edwards Bayesian Research Conference January 19-20, 2012


In this conference, investigators present topics that might be empirical or theoretical, involving questions that may be basic or applied, and studying theories that may be normative or descriptive. Topics deal with judgment and decision theory, basic and applied, either normative or descriptive, and are NOT limited to Bayes theorem or Bayesian statistics.

Michael Birnbaum will host the 50th meetings in Fullerton January 19-20, 2012. There will also be a Web workshop on Saturday, Jan. 21, co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Decision Research Center of Fullerton.

We hope you will accept the invitation to attend, which has more information on the conference.

Deadline to submit papers is December 10, 2011. On-Line Paper Submission and Registration for the Conference.

A Bit of History of these Meetings

The Bayesian Research Conference was hosted for 41 years by Ward Edwards, and for many years it was held each year in mid February at the Sportsman's Lodge in Studio City, California. These meetings have been very high in quality, extremely diverse in topic and approach, and under Ward's leadership since 1961, they established a pattern of extremely fruitful, constructive, and congenial meetings. picture of Ward Edwards and Jim Shanteau

The 44th and succeeding conferences are now the Edwards Bayesian Research Conference, honoring Ward Edwards, who passed away in early 2005. In this picture, Ward and Jim Shanteau converse at an earlier meeting. As Ben Newall (2009) has written, "Ward Edwards is commonly regarded as the Father of behavioral decision making. In two papers, The Theory of Decision Making published in Psychological Bulletin in 1954 and Behavioral Decision Theory published in the Annual Review of Psychology in 1961 he founded and then subsequently gave a name to the field. Then in 1963 he introduced psychologists to Bayesian thinking with his paper Bayesian Statistical Inference for Psychological Research published in Psychological Review. These truly seminal papers have become part of the folklore of the field and their influence can hardly be overstated." To those accomplishments, one might add his paper in the Psychological Review on Subjective probabilities inferred from decisions in which Edwards introduced the idea of probability weighting functions that depend on the configuration of consequences, an idea that is central to Prospect Theory, which was co-authored by his former student, Amos Tversky, and Daniel Kahneman.

Other Links

Links to other items of interest to Bayesians and decision makers

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