Excellent. This is an example of the usefulness of Bayesian reasoning, and it can be generalized to any situation where you are trying to use an observation of the form ‘it-hasn’t-happened-yet’ to update your estimate of it’s rate of occurring.
So, paraphrasing what you said, I first choose a reasonable range of probabilities for something-happening and a very rough estimate of my probabilities for those probabilities over that range. (For example, I think my house would sell in between 1 out of 50 and 1 out of 10 showings, and the probability should increase linearly over that range with some slope.) Second, each observation that something-hasn’t-happened should update my probabilities as you described.
This is very interesting to me, that I can do something with the ‘information’ I get after each showing without an offer, and these calculations give me something to do while I’m waiting. (Besides continuing to stage my house, which I continue to work on as well even though I suspect I am in the region of diminishing marginal returns for that.)
Excellent. This is an example of the usefulness of Bayesian reasoning, and it can be generalized to any situation where you are trying to use an observation of the form ‘it-hasn’t-happened-yet’ to update your estimate of it’s rate of occurring.
So, paraphrasing what you said, I first choose a reasonable range of probabilities for something-happening and a very rough estimate of my probabilities for those probabilities over that range. (For example, I think my house would sell in between 1 out of 50 and 1 out of 10 showings, and the probability should increase linearly over that range with some slope.) Second, each observation that something-hasn’t-happened should update my probabilities as you described.
This is very interesting to me, that I can do something with the ‘information’ I get after each showing without an offer, and these calculations give me something to do while I’m waiting. (Besides continuing to stage my house, which I continue to work on as well even though I suspect I am in the region of diminishing marginal returns for that.)
I finally formatted my spreadsheet as a google doc; you can find it here.
Note! See represenatativeness. Don’t think anything is wrong if it doesn’t sell after 50 showings.