Occam's Razor

Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitas.
(Plurality should not be posited without necessity.)

William of Ockham (1285-1347)

A more easily understood phrasing of Occam's Razor is:

• Of two alternative explanations for the same phenomena, the more complicated is more likely to have something wrong with it, and therefore, other things being equal, the more simple is the more likely to be correct.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) paraphrased Occam's Razor this way:

• Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

A short biography of William of Ockham is available on the web.

For an example using Occam's Razor try this page. The site also contains more links about Occam's Razor.

Archer Mayor, a mystery writer based in Vermont, likes the concept so much that he titled one of his Joe Gunther mysteries Occam's Razor.

Steven Constable has a web page on Occam's inversion. An early reference on Occam's inversion is:
Constable, S. C., R. L. Parker, and C. G. Constable, 1987, Occam's Inversion: a practical algorithm for generating smooth models from EM sounding data, Geophysics, 52, 289-300. Get the paper in PDF format.

Searching the web for Occam's Razor will find many websites.

Last updated February 20, 2008, by William P. Clement.
© William P. Clement 2008