The primary aim of a scientific investigation is to find the most likely model for a situation out of a host of alternative explanations. We usually start out with many ideas and end up with a few hypotheses but these are usually the ones that are most difficult to distinguish between. Our aim is to thin that down to one with no plausible alternatives. I am assuming that for this symposium our ...

The main drawback of the optimal design approach is that it assumes the statistical model is known. In this paper, a new approach to reduce the dependency on the assumed model is proposed. The approach takes into account the model uncertainty by incorporating the bias in the design criterion and the ability to test for lack-of-fit. Several new designs are derived in the paper and they are compa...

Analysis of work of art may be treated as some sort of classification of information: does the work is really artistic or not. This article is an attempt to introduce some classification criteria, though the author understands that the problem is extremely delicate and complicated. Attractiveness of work of art is determined by its proportions. The screen of a computer by itself is a mechanism ...

In this paper we extend the concept of exception spaces as defined by Cost and Salzberg (Cost and Salzberg, 1993), in the context of exemplar-based reasoning. Cost et al. defined exception spaces based on the goodness, in terms of performance, of an exemplar. While this is straightforward when using exemplars for classification problems, such a definition does not exist for regression problems....

Scientists who use animals in research must justify the number of animals to be used, and committees that review proposals to use animals in research must review this justification to ensure the appropriateness of the number of animals to be used. This article discusses when the number of animals to be used can best be estimated from previous experience and when a simple power and sample size c...

We argue for a naturalistic account for appraising scientific methods that carries non-trivial normative force. We develop our approach by comparison with Laudan’s (American Philosophical Quarterly 24:19–31, 1987, Philosophy of Science 57:20–33, 1990) “normative naturalism” based on correlating means (various scientific methods) with ends (e.g., reliability). We argue that such a meta-methodolo...