Related papers: A simple model of scientific progress - with examp…
We argue for a foundational epistemic claim and a hypothesis about the production and uses of mathematical epidemiological models, exploring the consequences for our political and socio-economic lives. First, in order to make the best use…
The birth and decline of disciplines are critical to science and society. However, no quantitative model to date allows us to validate competing theories of whether the emergence of scientific disciplines drives or follows the formation of…
There is a perception that climate science can only be approached with complex computer simulations. But working climate scientists often use simple models to understand their simulations and make order-of-magnitude estimates. This article…
Statistical hypothesis testing is the central method to demarcate scientific theories in both exploratory and inferential analyses. However, whether this method befits such purpose remains a matter of debate. Established approaches to…
Public policy also represent a special subdiscipline within political science, within political science. They are given increasing importance and importance in the context of scientific research and scientific approaches. Public policy as a…
Scientific progress is inherently sequential: collective knowledge is updated as new studies enter the literature. We propose the sequential meta-analysis research trace (SMART), which quantifies the influence of each study at the time it…
This is the English version of my inaugural lecture at Coll\`ege de France in 2021, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxktplKMhKU. I reflect on the difficulty of multi-disciplinary research, which often hinges of unexpected…
Mathematical models play an increasingly important role in the interpretation of biological experiments. Studies often present a model that generates the observations, connecting hypothesized process to an observed pattern. Such generative…
Toy models are highly idealized and deliberately simplified models that retain only the essential features of a system in order to explore specific theoretical questions. Long used in physics and other sciences, they have recently begun to…
Given an arbitrary long but finite sequence of observations from a finite set, we construct a simple process that approximates the sequence, in the sense that with high probability the empirical frequency, as well as the empirical one-step…
Decision-makers abhor uncertainty, and it is certainly true that the less there is of it the better. However, recognizing that uncertainty is part of the equation, particularly for deciding on environmental policy, is a prerequisite for…
Accurate comparisons between theoretical models and experimental data are critical for scientific progress. However, inferred physical model parameters can vary significantly with the chosen physics model, highlighting the importance of…
Compartmental epidemic models have been widely used for predicting the course of epidemics, from estimating the basic reproduction number to guiding intervention policies. Studies commonly acknowledge these models' assumptions but less…
This thesis is about the study of complex systems through simple models. Our work evidences the relevance of this kind of modeling in science, which provides us with a better understanding of nature at minimum cost. The fundamentals tools…
Many economic theory models incorporate finiteness assumptions that, while introduced for simplicity, play a real role in the analysis. We provide a principled framework for scaling results from such models by removing these finiteness…
Although definitions of technology exist to explain the patterns of technological innovations, there is no general definition that explain the role of technology for humans and other animal species in environment. The goal of this study is…
Measurement involves the determination of quantitative estimates of physical quantities from experiment, along with estimates of their associated uncertainties. Herewith an experimental system model is the key to extracting information from…
Current benchmarks that test LLMs on static, already-solved problems (e.g., math word problems) effectively demonstrated basic capability acquisition. The natural progression has been toward larger, more comprehensive and challenging…
Few-shot classification refers to learning a classifier for new classes given only a few examples. While a plethora of models have emerged to tackle it, we find the procedure and datasets that are used to assess their progress lacking. To…
Empirical substantive research, such as in the life or social sciences, is commonly categorized into the two modes exploratory and confirmatory, both of which are essential to scientific progress. The former is also referred to as…