Ockhamova britva

Occamova britva (ili Ockhamova oštrica) je princip koji se povezuje sa Engleskim franjevačkim svećenikom Williamom od Ockhama.

U svom najjednostavnijem obliku, "Occamova britva" govori da količina pretpostavki treba biti što je moguće manja. U svakodnevnom jeziku, glasila bi
 "Ako imate dvije teorije koje predviđaju isto, odaberite jednostavniju."
Na primjer, uzrok za izgorijelo stablo može biti udar groma ili je neko dovezao posebnu mašinu do drveta i upotrijebio je za paljenje gornjih grana drveta, te je zatim posadio travu da prikrije tragove dovoženja mašine do drveta. Prema "Occamovoj britvi", udar groma je bolje objašnjenje jer zahtijeva manje pretpostavki.

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 Filozofija

 Vanjski linkovi 

 Dobra definicija
 Okamova britva i hemija
 Šta je Okamova britva? This essay distinguishes Occam's Razor (used for theories with identical predictions) from the Principle of Parsimony (which can be applied to theories with different predictions).
 Skeptic's Dictionary: Okamova britva
 Okamova britva, an essay at The Galilean Library on the historical and philosophical implications by Paul Newall.
 NIPS 2001 Workshop "Foundations of Occam's Razor and parsimony in learning"
 "We Must Choose The Simplest Physical Theory: Levin-Li-Vitányi Theorem And Its Potential Physical Applications"
 "Sharpening Ockham's razor on a Bayesian strop" (pdf), by William H. Jefferys and James O. Berger; gives an objective quantification of Occam's razor within Bayesian statistics (with scientific applications)
 Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms, by David J.C. MacKay, includes an introductory chapter on the automatic Occam's razor that is embodied by Bayesian model comparison.
 "Message Length as an Effective Ockham's Razor in Decision Tree Induction", by S. Needham and D. Dowe, Proc. 8th International Workshop on AI and Statistics (2001), pp253-260. (Shows how Ockham's razor works fine when interpreted as Minimum Message Length (MML).)
 Lloyd's MML pages describe how Minimum Message Length induction extends Ockham's razor for differing hypotheses. (MML is a scale-invariant Bayesian model selection method.)
 An extensive bibliography of publications related to Occam's Razor.
 Occam's sword  at wikinfo
 Simplicity at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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