William of Occam or Ockham was a 14 th Century philosopher and theologian. He is credited with coming up with a concept which has come to be known as “Occam’s razor.” Simply put, Occam’s razor states that when you are trying to find an explanation to something you observe, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. For example: you walk into a room that is supposed to have a dog and a bird in it. The dog is there, but not the bird, though pasted to the dog’s mouth are some bloody feathers. Now, you could come up with all kinds of theories about what happened to the bird. Matter displacement, some spy came in and stole the bird, you were lied to about the bird in the first place, or maybe it is the first case of an object turning invisible. But the simplest explanation (the dog ate the bird) is the most likely to be correct. Scientists and mathematicians use Occam’s razor as part of their basic guidelines (No, I am not sure where the "razor" part comes from) . ...