2,978 research outputs found
Occam's razor meets WMAP
Using a variety of quantitative implementations of Occam's razor we examine
the low quadrupole, the ``axis of evil'' effect and other detections recently
made appealing to the excellent WMAP data. We find that some razors {\it fully}
demolish the much lauded claims for departures from scale-invariance. They all
reduce to pathetic levels the evidence for a low quadrupole (or any other low
cut-off), both in the first and third year WMAP releases. The ``axis of
evil'' effect is the only anomaly examined here that survives the humiliations
of Occam's razor, and even then in the category of ``strong'' rather than
``decisive'' evidence. Statistical considerations aside, differences between
the various renditions of the datasets remain worrying
A Quantitative Occam's Razor
This paper derives an objective Bayesian "prior" based on considerations of
entropy/information. By this means, it produces a quantitative measure of
goodness of fit (the "H-statistic") that balances higher likelihood against the
number of fitting parameters employed. The method is intended for
phenomenological applications where the underlying theory is uncertain or
unknown.
For example, it can help decide whether the large angle anomalies in the CMB
data should be taken seriously.
I am therefore posting it now, even though it was published before the arxiv
existed.Comment: plainTeX, 16 pages, no figures. Most current version is available at
http://www.physics.syr.edu/~sorkin/some.papers/ (or wherever my home-page may
be
Occam's Razor of Public Policy
Occam's razor is the idea that when two rival theories explain a phenomenon, the simpler theory is to be preferred. Aristotle's epicycles fit the data as well as Kepler's ellipses, and a pure empiricist could have been agnostic between the two. Occam's razor guides us in preferring Kepler's ellipses on the grounds that this is a simpler explanation
Simple or simplistic? Scientists' views on Occam's razor
This paper presents a discourse analysis of 30 popular science books and 40 semi-structured interviews with scientists on their views of Occam's razor and simplicity. It finds that there are many different interpretations and thoughts about the precise meaning of the principle as well as many scientists who reject it outright, or only a very limited version. In light of the variation of scientists' opinions, the paper asks what use it has as a rhetorical device and how scientists' interpretation of Occam's razor impacts on the study of popular science and affects the communication between philosophy and science
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