Word.ws English Dictionary

Bayes' theorem

Bayes' theorem proper noun: a theorem expressed as an equation that describes the conditional probability of an event or state given prior knowledge of another event.

Proper noun

Bayes' theorem

  1. A theorem expressed as an equation that describes the conditional probability of an event or state given prior knowledge of another event.
    • The starting point for many techniques in probabilistic classification is Bayes' theorem, which provides a way of relating evidence to a hypothesis.2010, Jonathan Harrington, Phonetic Analysis of Speech Corpora, page 327
    • Bayes's theorem is a relationship between the conditional probabilities of two events.2011, Allen Downey, Think Stats, O'Reilly, page 56

Synonyms of Bayes' theorem

Forms of Bayes' theorem

alternative formBayes theorem
alternative formBayes's theorem

Origin of Bayes' theorem

Named after English mathematician Thomas Bayes (1701–1761), who developed an early formulation. The modern expression of the theorem is due to Pierre-Simon Laplace, who extended Bayes's work but was apparently unaware of it.

Questions about Bayes' theorem

What does Bayes' theorem mean?
Bayes' theorem means a theorem expressed as an equation that describes the conditional probability of an event or state given prior knowledge of another event.
What part of speech is Bayes' theorem?
Bayes' theorem is a proper noun.

Words near Bayes' theorem in the dictionary

  1. bayerites
  2. Bayern
  3. bayes
  4. Bayes' law
  5. Bayes' rule
  6. Bayes' theorem
  7. bayesian
  8. Bayesian network
  9. Bayesian networks
  10. Bayesianism
  11. Bayesianist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Bayes' theorem (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Bayes' theorem.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bayes%27_theorem. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.