Occam’s Razor

Occam’s Razor

• Occam’s razor says “prefer simplicity”
• As a heuristic it has stood the test of time
• It has been argued that Bayes justifies Occam’s razor. More precisely, if:
  • you put a positive prior probability on a sharp null hypothesis
  • the data are generated by a model “near” the null model
  • the sample size is not too large

Then (usually) the posterior probability of the null hypothesis is larger than its prior probability

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