Editing Minimum message length (section)

{{short description|Formal information theory restatement of Occam's Razor}}
'''Minimum message length''' ('''MML''') is a Bayesian information-theoretic method for statistical model comparison and selection.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Statistical and inductive inference by minimum message length|last=Wallace, C. S. (Christopher S.), -2004.|date=2005|publisher=Springer|isbn=9780387237954|location=New York|oclc=62889003}}</ref> It provides a formal [[information theory]] restatement of [[Occam's Razor]]: even when models are equal in their measure of fit-accuracy to the observed data, the one generating the most concise ''explanation'' of data is more likely to be correct (where the ''explanation'' consists of the statement of the model, followed by the [[Lossless compression|lossless encoding]] of the data using the stated model). MML was invented by [[Chris Wallace (computer scientist)|Chris Wallace]], first appearing in the seminal paper "An information measure for classification".<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Wallace|first1=C. S.|last2=Boulton|first2=D. M.|date=1968-08-01|title=An Information Measure for Classification|journal=The Computer Journal|language=en|volume=11|issue=2|pages=185–194|doi=10.1093/comjnl/11.2.185|issn=0010-4620|doi-access=free}}</ref> MML is intended not just as a theoretical construct, but as a technique that may be deployed in practice.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Coding Ockham's Razor.|last=Allison, Lloyd.|date=2019|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-3030094881|oclc=1083131091}}</ref> It differs from the related concept of [[Kolmogorov complexity]] in that it does not require use of a [[Turing completeness|Turing-complete]] language to model data.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last1=Wallace|first1=C. S.|last2=Dowe|first2=D. L.|date=1999-01-01|title=Minimum Message Length and Kolmogorov Complexity|url=https://academic.oup.com/comjnl/article/42/4/270/558949|journal=The Computer Journal|language=en|volume=42|issue=4|pages=270–283|doi=10.1093/comjnl/42.4.270|issn=0010-4620|url-access=subscription}}</ref>