All models are wrong. Some are useful. G.E.P.Box

Models must be used but must never be believed. Martin Bradbury Wilk

The Basic Ideas and polytomous items

We have thus far occupied ourselves entirely with the basic, familiar form of the Rasch model. I justify this fixation in two ways. First, it is the simplest and the form that is most used and second, it contains the kernel (b_n – d_i) for pretty much everything else. It is the mathematical equivalent of a person throwing a dart at a balloon. Scoring is very simple; either you hit it or you don’t and they know if you did or not. The likelihood of the person hitting the target depends only on the skill of the person and the “elusiveness” of the target. If there is one The Rasch Model, this is it.

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