ABC thesis

I am currently in London for the thesis examination of Oliver Ratmann and, while I am more than disapointed at finding my favourite Indian restaurant closed!, I enjoy very much reading this very rich and unusual thesis. As posted earlier, I have disagreements with some of the choices made in this thesis, in particular the ambivalent role of the error , whose discussion is to appear in PNAS, but it opens a whole range of new directions. In particular, it proposes an examination of the successive inclusion of diverse statistics, a bit in the spirit of Joyce and Marjoram, discussed in this post. It also considers the impact of testing for the adequacy of a model as testing for the hypothesis , which I find quite an interesting stance, even though I completely disagree with the approach! Indeed, a Bayes factor can be constructed almost formally for this hypothesis, thus formal Bayesian answers provided. But testing whether or not does not make sense since, even when the model fits, varies around zero. But this is nonetheless a very imaginative proposal! (Overall the thesis stands a very good chance for the Savage Prize 2011 if it is ever submitted!)