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One Size Does Not Fit All: Proposal for a Prior-adapted BIC

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Probabilities, Laws, and Structures

Abstract

This paper presents a refinement of the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). 7 While the original BIC selects models on the basis of complexity and fit, the 8 so-called prior-adapted BIC allows us to choose among statistical models that 9 differ on three scores: fit, complexity, and model size. The prior-adapted BIC 10 can therefore accommodate comparisons among statistical models that differ only 11 in the admissible parameter space, e.g., for choosing among models with different 12 constraints on the parameters. The paper ends with an application of this idea to a 13 well-known puzzle from the psychology of reasoning, the conjunction fallacy.

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Correspondence to Jan-Willem Romeijn .

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Romeijn, JW., van de Schoot, R., Hoijtink, H. (2012). One Size Does Not Fit All: Proposal for a Prior-adapted BIC . In: Dieks, D., Gonzalez, W., Hartmann, S., Stöltzner, M., Weber, M. (eds) Probabilities, Laws, and Structures. The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3030-4_7

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