Erica Thompson > Quotes

“we are left either to act too late based on data or with deep uncertainty based on a model.”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

“Models can be physical, mental, mathematical or computational, and they are by nature metaphorical.”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

“For example, the so-called ‘delta hedge’ is a way to construct a portfolio that is insensitive to small movements in the underlying prices:”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

“Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

“is this model structurally correct? Have I taken account of all relevant variables? Am I influencing the system by measuring and predicting it?”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

“Yet, if all models are wrong, there is certainly something to be said for sticking with a simple one that is known to be wrong rather than a complex one that could be wrong in more obscure ways.”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

“Artificial intelligences are not good at robust decision-making: without a human in the loop, they cannot exercise flexibility to account for unanticipated events or assign new value judgements to reflect a changing situation.”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

“One premise of this book is that unquantifiable uncertainties are important, are ubiquitous, are potentially accessible to us and should figure in our decision-making – but that to make use of them we must understand the limitations of our models, acknowledge their political context, escape from Model Land and construct predictive statements that are about the real world.”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

“But I think we all need to take seriously the possibility that other people have opposing views because they have thought carefully about it and because they have different interests and values, rather than because they are wrong or evil.”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

“Models are not simple tools that we can take up, use and put down again. The process of generating a model changes the way that we think about a situation, encourages rationalisation and storytelling, strengthens some concepts and weakens others.”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

“The authority of expertise only exists when there is trust in expertise, and that is again a social question, not a mathematical one.”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

“As computer models become more and more central to decision-making, it is notable that the visualisation of model output is increasingly seen as a priority, albeit one that scientists typically say they are not very good at.”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

“To assume that errors are random is to assume that our model is structurally perfect and that the only uncertainties result from inaccuracies, rather than misunderstandings.”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

“A mathematician or a computer might stop at that point and declare the task impossible, but let’s remember that people, businesses and organisations face exactly that challenge every day and they are not paralysed; they – we – can make decisions despite radical and unquantifiable uncertainty.”
― Erica Thompson, Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It