What is Occam's Razor?

Question

I'm reading a book that makes several references to Occam's Razor. I know I learned about it years ago in school but I can't remember what it is.

Answer 1

The principle that all things considered, the simplest answer is most often the right one.

Answer 2

William of Ockham was a monk and a logician who is probably more famous for this logical argument than for anything else he did or was.

Basically, the argument goes that you should eliminate any complexity that is not necessary ('shaving it off' so to speak). Most people rephrase this into the maxim, "the simplest solution is usually the true one". It is a sort of way to logically choose between a variety of possible explanations: choose the simplest one that still fits all the facts.

For example, we might imagine that gravity is caused by invisible hamsters which push things around in exactly the way we observe and but otherwise don't interact with normal material in any way. Should we launch a scientific expedition to search for gravity hamsters? Occam's Razor would suggest that unless gravity hamsters explain some data about gravity that current theories don't, there's not much point in looking into it. Likewise, if we came up with a hyper-simple theory of gravity that still explained everything just as well, the old one might logically be discarded as well.

Of course, the use of the word 'usually' in there is a trap door in the argument through which all kinds of things can sneak out. So it's more a rule of thumb than anything else.

Answer 3

In the modern sense it it simply "The simplest answer is usually the correct one," translated directly from the original Latin it is "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." [1]

The best way to describe it would be to give an example - say you are walking in the woods and you see an apple on the group under an apple tree, you may conclude that it fell out of the tree, or someone picked the apple from the tree and placed it on the ground where you found it. According to Occam's Razor concluding that it fell out of the tree would be the "correct" answer due to the fact that it is the simplest.

Answer 4

Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or "shaving off," those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"):

Answer 5

These guys above a right. It is the idea that the simplest solution is often the best solution. It is not generally true, but there it is.

Answer 6

It's sort of the idea that the simplest explaination is likely to be the most correct one.

Answer 7

It has something to do with the simplest answer being the right answer. As answers go, please do not listen to mine. I think I am on the right track but I may have over simplified this awesomely titled whatever it is.

Answer 8

All things being equal the most obvious answer is usually the right one.....

Answer 9

What book are you reading?