Quotes About Parsimony

Parsimony is always in the forefront of a scientist's mind when choosing between theories, but it isn't always obvious how to judge it.

If time is money, it seems moral to save time, above all one's own, and such parsimony is excused by consideration for others. One is straight-forward.

Insofar as explanation fails to account for some salient fact, it is incomplete and its parsimony can no longer rightly be regarded as an asset. Indeed, the key failing of materialism, as we shall see, is that its parsimony is purchased at the cost of misrepresenting reality.

One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.

Learn taciturnity and let that be your motto!

Learn taciturnity and let that be your motto!

The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque.

The want of parsimony, in time of peace, imposes the necessity of contracting debt in time of war. When

Most scientists like to operate in the context of economy. If you don't need an explanatory principle, don't invoke it.

Marriage forces him to live with more ornament as well as sentiment, as it protects him, also, from the extremities of his own nature - from a frigid parsimony or a luxuriant sloth, from squalor, and from excessive sleeping, drinking, smoking, or freethinking.

Mere parsimony is not economy…. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part of true economy.

Taxpayers and legislators alike seem generally ignorant of the extent to which they are being soaked by the hidden costs of this parsimony. For instance, public care costs far less than public jails. The National Alliance on Mental Illness has estimated that for every $ 2,000 to $ 3,000 per year spent on treating the mentally ill, $ 50,000 is saved on incarceration costs.

character-traits of orderliness, parsimony and obstinacy, which are so often prominent in people who were formerly anal erotics, are to be regarded as the first and most constant results of the sublimation of anal eroticism

Nothing perhaps has so retarded the reception of the higher conclusions of Geology among men in general, as ... [the] instinctive parsimony of the human mind in matters where time is concerned.

There is nothing worse than being ashamed of parsimony or poverty.

Well I don't feel sectarian against sparseness, although I sometimes get a little chippy about this. I resent the way that a certain notion of parsimony has become the norm for skilful literary writing.

Jack Benny's so cheap he wouldn't give you the parsley off his fish.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

Wealth comes from industry and from the hard experience of human toil. To dissipate it in waste and extravagance is disloyalty to humanity. This is by no means a doctrine of parsimony. Both men and nations should live in accordance with their means and devote their substance not only to productive industry, but to the creation of the various forms of beauty and the pursuit of culture which give adornments to the art of life.

I think what we need to do here is to make use of Thargola's Sword. You know what that is, Beenay?" "Of course, sir. The principle of parsimony. First put forth by the medieval philosopher Thargola 14, who said, 'We must drive a sword through any hypothesis that is not strictly necessary

Mere parsimony is not economy . . . expense, and great expense, may be an essential part of true economy.

he stressed that the main feature of science is economy of thought;

Occam's razor or the law of parsimony, which states that when two theories compete to explain an unknown phenomenon we should err on the side of the simpler explanation.

Parsimony is enough to make the master of the golden mines as poor as he that has nothing; for a man may be brought to a morsel of bread by parsimony as well as profusion.