Why Model? | Santa Fe Institute

A good model can be useful even when it fails. “It should be a given that whatever forecast we make on average will be wrong,” Ozonoff told me. “So usually it’s about understanding how it’s wrong, and what to do when it’s wrong, and minimizing the cost to us when it’s wrong.” The key is in remembering that a model is a tool to help us understand th

As Scott Page put it in his brilliant book The Model Thinker, for any complex phenomenon we need many models that can challenge each other, in this case including not just epidemiological models but also economic and social models.

For that matter, should we be using models at all?

Forecasters have no choice but to base their judgments on models, be they complex or informal, mathematical or intuitive.  Models, by definition, consist of assumptions: “If A happens, then B will happen.” In other words, relationships and responses. But for us to willingly employ a model’s output, we have to believe the model is re

Rather, after a simulation is run a thousand or a million times, such models show policy makers the range of possible futures and their relative probabilities if policies remain unchanged. Then, by altering policies in the model and running them another million times, we might begin to understand paths to better futures.

A big lesson of recent neuroscience is that models precede observations; they determine what we see as well as what sense we make of it. The mark of smart government, then, is that it has many models and constantly refines and improves them. A government that shares its intelligence with society also shares its models and encourages people to make

The scientific method begins with a broad base of knowledge, an understanding of the facts and contours of the…