An Example of the Subjectivist Statistical Method for Learning from Data: Why do Whales Strand when They do?

Attending the Asti summer school where the papers in this book were presented were some thirty graduate students writing empirical theses using applied statistics. Their topics ranged from the monitoring of commercial fishing stock around Sardinia, to learning about the situation of current Nigerian immigrants to Italy, and to comparing the nutrition and weight gain of children of Chinese immigrants in Italy with children of their non-emigrating cohort in a Chinese village. The thesis students were attending the course to improve their practical statistical skills. Having been involved in the modern development of subjective Bayesian methods for some thirty years myself, I was somewhat surprised by how little was known of these major developments which have transformed statistical thinking throughout the world over this period. They had received major impetus from the research of the noted Italian probabilist, Bruno de Finetti, and his followers.