I have been following the AIC thread with some interest. While I'm a newcomer to the subject and don't know much about the ins and outs of model selection, it seems like data accuracy and precision should drive how much we penalize extra parameters. Kepler rejected circular planetary orbits and went with elliptical ones only because he believed Tycho Brahe's data was of such high quality that even a very small discrepancy between observation and prediction was worth taking seriously. Data that was not known to be as precise as Brahe's would not have convinced him to fit elliptical rather than circular orbits to the observations.
I'd very much like to hear people's thoughts on this. Jane Shevtsov -- ------------- Jane Shevtsov Ecology Ph.D. candidate, University of Georgia co-founder, <www.worldbeyondborders.org> Check out my blog, <http://perceivingwholes.blogspot.com>Perceiving Wholes "The whole person must have both the humility to nurture the Earth and the pride to go to Mars." --Wyn Wachhorst, The Dream of Spaceflight
