What is a "hybrid" model?

[Ron Sun]

Jeff Shrager <shrager at neurocog.lrdc.pitt.edu> wrote:
>> I guess this is as good time as any to raise the following issue.  From
>> the mathematical perspective, I have never seen (in mathematics) HYBRID
>> models. (Mathematicians don't use the term.) Hence a question: How are we
>> to understand this term outside our mathematical experience?
>
>When you have two (or more) hacks, each of which does part of a job,
>and you can't find one that does the whole job, you wire them together
>and call it a hybrid model.  Seems simple enough.  (Maybe it's like
>wiring together two (or more) diffeqs.)  The brain is full of such
>things.
>
>Cheers,
>  Jeff


Exactly. you find such things not just in neuroscience, 
but also in psychological data, and in AI models.

Are they necessarily bad for these fields? not if they lead to the discovery
of real principles.  BTW, principles can be ``hybrid", contrary to what
some may say. (you can call them synergistic, symbiotic, or what have you.)

Cheers,
--Ron

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Dr. Ron Sun                      http://cs.ua.edu/faculty/sun/sun.html
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