The limits of mathematical modeling
- sciart0
- Apr 15
- 1 min read
Excerpt: "In the end, Thompson comes back to experts. Michael Fish interpreted his data correctly, but the data itself was not sufficient. The real mistake made by the Met Office, the UK’s national weather service, was putting too much faith in its model.
She recounts the Challenger disaster in 1986. Previous missions had revealed several faults in the space shuttle’s O-rings, which sealed its rocket boosters. Some engineers had calculated that the likelihood of a major disaster was high. Others saw it differently: the fact that Challengerhad been able to complete the previous flights provided a data set that underlined its strength. “On the face of it, and with reference to the data,” Thompson argues, “either scenario is feasible.”
It is only when the modeling is supplemented with expert judgment that we stand a chance of escaping from Model Land and finding ourselves with information that can be applied in the real world."