Dimensional Analysis in Statistical Modelling
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Building on recent work in statistical science, the paper presents a theory for modelling natural phenomena that unifies physical and statistical paradigms based on the underlying principle that a model must be nondimensionalizable. After all, such phenomena cannot depend on how the experimenter chooses to assess them. Yet the model itself must be comprised of quantities that can be determined theoretically or empirically. Hence, the underlying principle requires that the model represents these natural processes correctly no matter what scales and units of measurement are selected. This goal was realized for physical modelling through the celebrated theories of Buckingham and Bridgman and for statistical modellers through the invariance principle of Hunt and Stein. Building on recent research in statistical science, the paper shows how the latter can embrace and extend the former. The invariance principle is extended to encompass the Bayesian paradigm, thereby enabling an assessment of model uncertainty. The paper covers topics not ordinarily seen in statistical science regarding dimensions, scales, and units of quantities in statistical modelling. It shows the special difficulties that can arise when models involve transcendental functions, such as the logarithm which is used e.g. in likelihood analysis and is a singularity in the family of Box-Cox family of transformations. Further, it demonstrates the importance of the scale of measurement, in particular how differently modellers must handle ratio- and interval-scales
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.031 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".