Take the 2-minute tour ×  What is naive about Naive Bayes? Have
an exam later, and this was a question on the sample paper we
received. We haven't found a good clear answer yet, could anyone
explain this?  share|improve this question You need not be
embarassed Peddler, you have asked a good question. +1 –  Yavar
May 16 '12 at 8:40 add comment  2 Answers  up vote 8 down vote
accepted  There's actually a very good example on Wikipedia:  In
simple terms, a naive Bayes classifier assumes that the presence
(or absence) of a particular feature of a class is unrelated to
the presence (or absence) of any other feature, given the class
variable. For example, a fruit may be considered to be an apple
if it is red, round, and about 4" in diameter. Even if these
features depend on each other or upon the existence of the other
features, a naive Bayes classifier considers all of these
properties to independently contribute to the probability that
this fruit is an apple.  Basically, it's "naive" because it
makes assumptions