Discrepancy function

In structural equation modeling, a discrepancy function is a mathematical function which describes how closely a structural model conforms to observed data; it is a measure of goodness of fit. Larger values of the discrepancy function indicate a poor fit of the model to data. In general, the parameter estimates for a given model are chosen so as to make the discrepancy function for that model as small as possible. Analogous concepts in statistics are known as goodness of fit or statistical distance, and include deviance and divergence.