Related papers: Models and numbers: Representing the world or impo…
Since its first formulations almost a century ago, mathematical models for disease spreading contributed to understand, evaluate and control the epidemic processes.They promoted a dramatic change in how epidemiologists thought of the…
Geopolitics is shaped by trade and borders. We develop a general-equilibrium model in which both are endogenously determined in a linear world. Their interaction rationalizes geopolitical outcomes that cannot be obtained when either trade…
Most traditional models of uncertainty have focused on the associational relationship among variables as captured by conditional dependence. In order to successfully manage intelligent systems for decision making, however, we must be able…
Norms have been extensively proposed as coordination mechanisms for both agent and human societies. Nevertheless, choosing the norms to regulate a society is by no means straightforward. The reasons are twofold. First, the norms to choose…
This commentary proposes a framework for understanding the role of statistics in policy-making, regulation, and bureaucratic systems. I introduce the concept of "ex ante policy," describing statistical rules and procedures designed before…
In this paper we study some mathematical models describing evolution of population density and spread of epidemics in population systems in which spatial movement of individuals depends only on the departure and arrival locations and does…
The study of opinions, their formation and change, is one of the defining topics addressed by social psychology, but in recent years other disciplines, like computer science and complexity, have tried to deal with this issue. Despite the…
Prediction models are popular in medical research and practice. By predicting an outcome of interest for specific patients, these models may help inform difficult treatment decisions, and are often hailed as the poster children for…
This paper argues that large language models have a valuable scientific role to play in serving as scientific models of public languages. Linguistic study should not only be concerned with the cognitive processes behind linguistic…
Representativeness is a foundational yet slippery concept. Though familiar at first blush, it lacks a single precise meaning. Instead, meanings range from typical or characteristic, to a proportionate match between sample and population, to…
The intrinsic difficulties in building realistic climate models and in providing complete, reliable and meaningful observational datasets, and the conceptual impossibility of testing theories against data imply that the usual Galilean…
Measurements play a crucial role in doing physics: Their results provide the basis on which we adopt or reject physical theories. In this note, we examine the effect of subjecting measurements themselves to our experience. We require that…
The relation between the requirement of efficient implementability and the product state representation of numbers is examined. Numbers are defined to be any model of the axioms of number theory or arithmetic. Efficient implementability…
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant changes in how people are currently living their lives. To determine how to best reduce the effects of the pandemic and start reopening societies, governments have drawn insights from…
In recent years the role of epidemic models in informing public health policies has progressively grown. Models have become increasingly realistic and more complex, requiring the use of multiple data sources to estimate all quantities of…
Despite many examples to the contrary, most models of elections assume that rules determining the winner will be followed. We present a model where elections are solely a public signal of the incumbent popularity, and citizens can protests…
Recently, social phenomena have received a lot of attention not only from social scientists, but also from physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists, in the emerging interdisciplinary field of complex system science. Opinion…
A pandemic poses particular challenges to decision-making because of the need to continuously adapt decisions to rapidly changing evidence and available data. For example, which countermeasures are appropriate at a particular stage of the…
Basic principles of mathematical modeling are reviewed in this book, with the focus on physics and its practical applications, and examples of selected mathematical methods are presented. Most of the models have been imported from physics…
We briefly review some of the scientific challenges and epistemological issues related to climate science. We discuss the formulation and testing of theories and numerical models, which, given the presence of unavoidable uncertainties in…