This investigation contains a critical survey of a collection of five well-known and often used standard models in pharmaceutical technology. The basic idea is to use the recognised Ockham's razor as a tool in search for simpler methods or explanations for these models. The study includes the indirect tensile strength of tablets, Pitt's equation for tensile strength of biconvex tablets, Adams' model for strength of agglomerates, Weibull's distribution for variability of strength measurements and Heckel's equation for compressibility. In all these cases simpler and equally valid solutions and explanations are presented and subsequently preferred rather than the original.