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Nature Biotechnology 27, 450–451 (1 May 2009) | doi:10.1038/nbt0509-450
Overpowering the component problem
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Abstract
The physicist John von Neumann famously said (as quoted by Enrico Fermi to Freeman Dyson), “With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.” By this, von Neumann meant that if a mathematical model has too many unknown parameters, it can be manipulated to fit almost anything, making the value of the modeling exercise questionable.
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