Earlier this week, Mark Buchanan's column in
Nature Physics featured
"The Limits of a Model" , concerning the pitfalls of epidemiological forecasting, of course a topic very much in the news in the last few months. Near the end Buchanan cites an intriguing paper by Thompson & Smith (2019),
"Escape From Model-Land", a bracing discussion of why one should be very humble about using mathematical/empirical models. It calls to mind another entertaining piece from over a decade ago, the
"Financial Modeler's Manifesto" by Emanuel Derman and Paul Wilmott.
DTLR strongly recommends the Thompson & Smith piece, a candidate for required reading by every applied mathematician, applied statistician, and mathematical/computational modeler in every discipline.
Reference
Erica L. Thompson and Leonard A. Smith, 2019: Escape From Model-Land.
Economics: The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal,
13: 2019-40.
