Parsimony
From Freepedia
Parsimony is the taking of extreme care at arriving at a course of action; or unusual or excessive frugality, extreme economy or stinginess. The word derives from Middle English parcimony, from Latin parsimonia, from parsus, past participle of parcere to spare.
Science
In science, parsimony is preference for the least complicated explanation for an observation. This is generally regarded as good when judging hypotheses. Occam's Razor also states the "principle of parsimony".
In systematics, maximum parsimony is a cladistic optimality criterion based on the principle of parsimony. Under maximum parsimony, the preferred phylogenetic tree is the tree that requires the least number of evolutionary changes.
In biogeography, parsimony is used to infer ancient migrations of species or populations by observing the geographic distribution and relationships of existing organisms. Given the phylogenetic tree, ancestral migrations are inferred to be those that require the minimum amount of total movement.
