Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2006-02-17
Phys.Rev. D74 (2006) 023503
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
9 pages, 4 figures, revised version accepted for publication in PRD, updated with WMAP3 results
Scientific paper
10.1103/PhysRevD.74.023503
We introduce a statistical measure of the effective model complexity, called the Bayesian complexity. We demonstrate that the Bayesian complexity can be used to assess how many effective parameters a set of data can support and that it is a useful complement to the model likelihood (the evidence) in model selection questions. We apply this approach to recent measurements of cosmic microwave background anisotropies combined with the Hubble Space Telescope measurement of the Hubble parameter. Using mildly non-informative priors, we show how the 3-year WMAP data improves on the first-year data by being able to measure both the spectral index and the reionization epoch at the same time. We also find that a non-zero curvature is strongly disfavored. We conclude that although current data could constrain at least seven effective parameters, only six of them are required in a scheme based on the Lambda-CDM concordance cosmology.
Kunz Martin
Parkinson David
Trotta Roberto
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