The Anna Karenina principle describes an endeavor in which a deficiency in any one of a number of factors dooms it to failure. Consequently, a successful endeavor (subject to this principle) is one where every possible deficiency has been avoided.
The name of the principle derives from Leo Tolstoy's book Anna Karenina, which begins:
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
In statistics, the term Anna Karenina principle is used to describe significance tests: there are any number of ways in which a dataset may violate the null hypothesis and only one in which all the assumptions are satisfied.
Read more about Anna Karenina Principle: Example: Failed Domestication, Ecological Risk Assessment, Aristotle's Version
Famous quotes containing the word principle:
“Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but patented a leaf. What Champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)