Fact-Free Learning

S-Tier
Journal: American Economic Review
Year: 2005
Volume: 95
Issue: 5
Pages: 1355-1368

Score contribution per author:

2.011 = (α=2.01 / 4 authors) × 4.0x S-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

People may be surprised to notice certain regularities that hold in existing knowledge they have had for some time. That is, they may learn without getting new factual information. We argue that this can be partly explained by computational complexity. We show that, given a knowledge base, finding a small set of variables that obtain a certain value of R2 is computationally hard, in the sense that this term is used in computer science. We discuss some of the implications of this result and of fact-free learning in general.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:aea:aecrev:v:95:y:2005:i:5:p:1355-1368
Journal Field
General
Author Count
4
Added to Database
2026-01-24