Predicates and reproducibility
While reading texts on statistics and meta-science I kept noticing vagueness.
For example, there seems to be half a dozen definitions of replicability in papers since 2016.
In this text, I try to formalize the underlying structure.
Edit 2020-11-01: The model below is basically the same, but poorer, than the causal models as presented by, for example, Pearl (2009).
Assume determinism.
Assume that for any function f there is a set of predicates, or context, C which need to hold for the function to hold, that is, return the correct answer.
Let this be denoted by C \xRightarrow{a} f.
For example, Bernoulli's equation solved for \rho only holds for a context C_b containing isentropic flows, that is, C_b \Rightarrow \text{Bernoulli's equation}, where C_b contains isentropic flows.
There have been arguments that such contexts need to contain an (open-ended) list of negative conditions (Hoefer, 2003).
Let these contexts and the contexts below also contain this list.
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