In
Bayesian statistics
Bayesian statistics is a theory in the field of statistics based on the Bayesian interpretation of probability where probability expresses a ''degree of belief'' in an event. The degree of belief may be based on prior knowledge about the event, ...
, a strong prior is a preceding assumption, theory, concept or idea upon which, after taking account of new information, a current assumption, theory, concept or idea is founded. The term is used to contrast the case of a weak or uninformative
prior probability
In Bayesian statistical inference, a prior probability distribution, often simply called the prior, of an uncertain quantity is the probability distribution that would express one's beliefs about this quantity before some evidence is taken into ...
. A strong prior would be a type of
informative prior in which the information contained in the
prior distribution dominates the information contained in the data being analysed. The
Bayesian analysis combines the information contained in the prior with that extracted from the data to produce the
posterior distribution which, in the case of a "strong prior", would be little changed from the prior distribution.
Bayesian statistics
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