George E. P. Box: Use

“All models are wrong; some models are useful.”

George E. P. Box

For instance in George E. P. Box, William Hunter and Stuart Hunter, Statistics for Experimenters, second edition, 2005, page 440. See "All models are wrong".

“We have a large reservoir of engineers (and scientists) with a vast background of engineering know how. They need to learn statistical methods that can tap into the knowledge. Statistics used as a catalyst to engineering creation will, I believe, always result in the fastest and most economical progress…”

George E. P. Box

Statement of 1992, quoted in Introduction to Statistical Experimental Design — What is it? Why and Where is it Useful? (2002) Johan Trygg & Svante Wold

Knowledge , Learning

“An innovative discussion of building empirical models and the fitting of surfaces to data. Introduces the general philosophy of response surface methodology, and details least squares for response surface work, factorial designs at two levels, fitting second-order models, adequacy of estimation and the use of transformation, occurrence and elucidation of ridge systems, and more. Some results are presented for the first time. Includes real-life exercises, nearly all with solutions.”

George E. P. Box

Introduction, book summary
Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces (1987)

Life , Exercises , Time

“I want to tell you how I got to be a statistician. I was, of course, born in England and in 1939… when war broke out in September of that year, although I was close to getting a degree in Chemistry, I abandoned that and joined the Army. They put me in the Engineers (and when I see a bridge I still catch myself calculating where I would put the charges to blow it up).
Before I could actually do any of that I was moved to a highly secret experimental station in the south of England. At the time they were bombing London every night and our job was to help to find out what to do if, one night, they used poisonous gas.
Some of England's best scientists were there. There were a lot of experiments with small animals, I was a lab assistant making biochemical determinations, my boss was a professor of physiology dressed up as a colonel, and I was dressed up as a staff sergeant.
The results I was getting were very variable and I told my colonel that what we really needed was a statistician.
He said "we can't get one, what do you know about it?"”

George E. P. Box

I said "Nothing, I once tried to read a book about it by someone called R. A. Fisher but I didn't understand it". He said "You've read the book so you better do it", so I said, "Yes sir"
An Accidental Statistician, 2010

War , Secret , Books , Understanding

“Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.”

George E. P. Box

Source: Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces (1987), p. 74

Question

“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.”

George E. P. Box

Source: Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces (1987), p. 424,

“A mechanistic model has the following advantages:
1. It contributes to our scientiﬁc understanding of the phenomenon under study.
2. It usually provides a better basis for extrapolation (at least to conditions worthy of further experimental investigation if not through the entire range of all input variables).
3. It tends to be parsimonious (i. e, frugal) in the use of parameters and to provide better estimates of the response”

George E. P. Box

Source: Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces (1987), p. 13-14 as cited in: Andrew Odlyzko (2010) Social Networks and Mathematical Models http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/ecra.westland.pdf Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 9(1): 26-28 (2010)

Understanding , Study