familiar with applied mathematics at the advanced undergraduate level or preferably higher
In working through the text, I have found that my undergraduate engineering degree and mathematics minor would not have been sufficient to understand the details of Jaynes’ arguments, following the derivations and solving the problems. I took some graduate courses in math and statistics, and more importantly I’ve picked up a smattering of many fields of math after my formal education, and these plus Google have sufficed.
Be advised that there are errors (typographical, mathematical, rhetorical) in the text that can be confusing if you try to follow Jaynes’ arguments exactly. Furthermore, it is most definitely written in a blustering manner (to bully his colleagues and others who learned frequentist statistics) rather than in an educational manner (to teach someone statistics for the first time). So if you want to use the text to learn the subject matter, I strongly recommend you take the denser parts slowly and invent problems based on them for yourself to solve.
I find it impossible not to constantly sense in Jaynes’ tone, and especially in his many digressions propounding his philosophies of various things, the same cantankerous old-man attitude that I encounter most often in cranks. The difference is that Jaynes is not a crackpot; whether by wisdom or luck, the subject matter that became his cranky obsession is exquisitely useful for remaining sane.
In working through the text, I have found that my undergraduate engineering degree and mathematics minor would not have been sufficient to understand the details of Jaynes’ arguments, following the derivations and solving the problems. I took some graduate courses in math and statistics, and more importantly I’ve picked up a smattering of many fields of math after my formal education, and these plus Google have sufficed.
Be advised that there are errors (typographical, mathematical, rhetorical) in the text that can be confusing if you try to follow Jaynes’ arguments exactly. Furthermore, it is most definitely written in a blustering manner (to bully his colleagues and others who learned frequentist statistics) rather than in an educational manner (to teach someone statistics for the first time). So if you want to use the text to learn the subject matter, I strongly recommend you take the denser parts slowly and invent problems based on them for yourself to solve.
I find it impossible not to constantly sense in Jaynes’ tone, and especially in his many digressions propounding his philosophies of various things, the same cantankerous old-man attitude that I encounter most often in cranks. The difference is that Jaynes is not a crackpot; whether by wisdom or luck, the subject matter that became his cranky obsession is exquisitely useful for remaining sane.