As soon as the news broke of the novel coronavirus we also began to hear of the importance of modeling and the phrase that would come to echo in all of our ears:
“If we only had a better model.”
My heart goes out to everyone struggling to make decisions as it seems there are no easy solutions. Most of our leaders have adopted models to help face the uncertainty. George Box explained the problem with models succinctly: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” The recent article in the Atlantic titled “Don’t Believe the COVID Models” argues that although models are flawed and rarely predict the future, we should cling to them anyway as they help us address the worst case. [1] Having sent robots into caves, bunkers, tunnels, minefields and radioactive environments, I’ve learned the problem with depending on a static model.