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Model Flexibility Analysis does not measure the persuasiveness of a fit
Citation
Evans, NJ and Howard, ZL and Heathcote, A and Brown, SD, Model Flexibility Analysis does not measure the persuasiveness of a fit, Psychological Review, 124, (3) pp. 339-345. ISSN 0033-295X (2017) [Refereed Article]
Copyright Statement
© 2017 American Psychological Association
Abstract
Recently, Veksler, Myers, and Gluck (2015) proposed model flexibility analysis as a method that "aids model evaluation by providing a metric for gauging the persuasiveness of a given fit" (p. 755) Model flexibility analysis measures the complexity of a model in terms of the proportion of all possible data patterns it can predict. We show that this measure does not provide a reliable way to gauge complexity, which prevents model flexibility analysis from fulfilling either of the 2 aims outlined by Veksler et al. (2015): absolute and relative model evaluation. We also show that model flexibility analysis can even fail to correctly quantify complexity in the most clear cut case, with nested models. We advocate for the use of well-established techniques with these characteristics, such as Bayes factors, normalized maximum likelihood, or cross-validation, and against the use of model flexibility analysis. In the discussion, we explore 2 issues relevant to the area of model evaluation: the completeness of current model selection methods and the philosophical debate of absolute versus relative model evaluation.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
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Keywords: | model Selection, flexibility, complexity, goodness-of-fit |
Research Division: | Psychology |
Research Group: | Cognitive and computational psychology |
Research Field: | Cognition |
Objective Division: | Expanding Knowledge |
Objective Group: | Expanding knowledge |
Objective Field: | Expanding knowledge in psychology |
UTAS Author: | Heathcote, A (Professor Andrew Heathcote) |
ID Code: | 113330 |
Year Published: | 2017 |
Web of Science® Times Cited: | 13 |
Deposited By: | Psychology |
Deposited On: | 2016-12-21 |
Last Modified: | 2018-07-25 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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