Fitting an elephant

“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.” — John von Neumann

Related post: Occam’s razor and Bayes’ theorem

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2 comments on “Fitting an elephant
  1. wyrdwyrd says:

    What was he getting at when he said this? That more variables means the model has less value?


    Furry cows moo and decompress.

  2. yihong says:

    Sometimes Gauss is credited for this quote

    http://levenspiel.com/octave/elephant.htm

    I couldn’t find the Chemical Innovation article where Levenspiel published his elephant curve model though.