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by Dragonfighter
Thu Jan 06, 2011 8:59 pm
Forum: Off-Topic
Topic: Interview Question
Replies: 17
Views: 1827

Re: Interview Question

RPB wrote:Occam's razor . The simplest answer is usually the correct answer.
A small nit to pick, Occam's (William of Ockham) wrote:
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
"Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." Which became known as "lex parsimoniae" or the "law of parsimony". Colloquially known as Occam's Razor.

Inductive logic lends itself easily to tautology and continuum fallacies (slippery slope arguments). Occam's Razor states that one should not add information to the hypothesis in question without first proving its need. For instance you have a hypothesis and axiom "A" is given, yet it does not complete the hypothesis, so postulate "B" must be introduced and tested as valid. Unnecessary complication would be where we add postulates B, C, D, etc. without first proving postulate A or the necessary elements of complication.

So Occam was noted for saying, "Given two competing theories, the simplest should be given preference." IOW, the more succinct of the two is more easily validated and barring contradictory fact should be accepted. That is where we get, "The simplest answer is usually correct", but it is not Occam's Razor.

:mrgreen:

Added in Edit:
Admittedly, I'm not a deep thinker, but the non-circular geometric shape thing doesn't make any sense to me. No matter what the shape, if it's small enough it can go through and if not it won't. If that's the answer it still doesn't make sense to me. The stress thing makes much more sense to me.
Because your thinking stacked planes not intersecting ones. Take a square for instance. A 4'x4' lid fits a 4'x4' lip on a manhole. But if you measure the hole diagonally it measures about 5.7 feet. So you drop that heavy four foot lid while moving it and a square side aligns somewhere other than edge to edge and down she goes. Now you have to recover the lid or clean up the brains of your co-worker that was below grade.

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