Escape from Model Land

How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It

By: Erica Thompson

Narrated by: Kirsty Dillon

Why mathematical models are so often wrong, and how we can make better decisions by accepting their limits

Whether we are worried about the spread of COVID-19 or making a corporate budget, we depend on mathematical models to help us understand the world around us every day. But models aren’t a mirror of reality. In fact, they are fantasies, where everything works out perfectly, every time. And relying on them too heavily can hurt us.

In Escape from Model Land, statistician Erica Thompson illuminates the hidden dangers of models. She demonstrates how models reflect the biases, perspectives, and expectations of their creators. Thompson shows us why understanding the limits of models is vital to using them well. A deeper meditation on the role of mathematics, this is an essential book for helping us avoid either confusing the map with the territory or throwing away the map completely, instead pointing to more nuanced ways to Escape from Model Land.

A very important book for thinking about climate, Covid or economics

Argues cogently for accepting diverse modelers and accepting diverse points of view in inputs and assumptions in building and interpreting models. Politicians, public health leaders, climatologists and the thinking elite should study this excellent book by Erica Thompson who has thought deeply about these issues. I loved the Kirsten Dilon’s expression and British accent.

a lot of worth while substance in this book

given that no one knows where the frontiers of models and science will lead in The next century, it is not at all fair or realistic to require the author of this book to somehow have clear perfect explanations of what that will be

. there are a number of very valuable real world case studies and wonderful historical examples in this book. the chapter that begins and ends talking about the history of climate models is a masterpiece and I think well worth the price of the book.

and there are a number of well-intentioned attempts to trace out understand and resolve a lot of the issues around modeling and science that are simply unresolved today. I think a practical way of looking at this book is as an excellent starting place for looking seriously at models.

I think the author does an admirable job of covering a topic that is in some sense all equations code and charts, in a book that more or less contains no equations or charts, rather is a book of narratives and dialogues about the subject, which also lends itself very well to being an audiobook.

Few new ideas…

Generally a waste of time to read. A lot of words thrown at a repeating narrative that models should not be taken out of the context with which they were built.