“Modeling Principle: Models are not right or wrong; they are more or less useful.”

—  Martin Fowler

Source: Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models, 1997, p. 2

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Modeling Principle: Models are not right or wrong; they are more or less useful." by Martin Fowler?
Martin Fowler photo
Martin Fowler18
British programmer 1963

Related quotes

George E. P. Box photo

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

George E. P. Box (1919–2013) British statistician

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".

Lars Peter Hansen photo

“I view the work I've done related to statistics and economics as roughly speaking, how to do something without having to do everything. So economic models -- how any model by definition isn't right. When someone just says, 'Oh, your model is wrong.' That's not much of an insight. What you want to know is, is wrong in important ways or wrong in ways that are less relevant? And you want to know what does the data really say about the model?”

Lars Peter Hansen (1952) American economist

Source: David Brancaccio (2013) " Nobel Prize in Economics winner Lars Peter Hansen on imperfect models http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/nobel-prize-economics-winner-lars-peter-hansen-imperfect-models" at marketplace.org.

George E. P. Box photo

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

George E. P. Box (1919–2013) British statistician

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

George E. P. Box photo

“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 (1919–2013) British statistician

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

Russell L. Ackoff photo

“The effectiveness of any model used to describe and understand behavior of a particular system as a whole ultimately depends on the degree to which that model accurately represents that system. Nevertheless, there have been and are situations in which application of deterministic or animate models to social systems have produced useful results for a short period of time. However, in a longer run, such mismatches usually result in less than desirable results because critical aspects of the social systems were omitted in the less complex model that was used.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Ackoff (1999, p. 34) cited in: Michael C. Jackson (2000) Systems Approaches to Management. p. 234.
1990s

Martin Fowler photo

“The second problem [with using UML for the purposes of this book] is that the Unified Modeling Language concentrates on implementation modeling rather than conceptual modeling”

Martin Fowler (1963) British programmer

Source: Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models, 1997, p. 314

Russell L. Ackoff photo

“The word model is used as a noun, adjective, and verb, and in each instance it has a slightly different connotation. As a noun "model" is a representation in the sense in which an architect constructs a small-scale model of a building or a physicist a large-scale model of an atom. As an adjective "model" implies a degree or perfection or idealization, as in reference to a model home, a model student, or a model husband. As a verb "to model" means to demonstrate, to reveal, to show what a thing is like.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1960s, Scientific method: optimizing applied research decisions, 1962, p. 108 as cited in: Charles West Churchman, Richard O. Mason (1976) World modeling: a dialogue. p. 23.

Fredrik Reinfeldt photo

“The Nordic welfare model is in many aspects a good model but it needs more of a choice for individuals.”

Fredrik Reinfeldt (1965) 32nd Prime Minister of Sweden

ibid

Russell L. Ackoff photo

“Scientific models have all these connotations. They are representations of states, objects, and events. They are idealized in the sense that they are less complicated than reality and hence easier to use for research purposes. These models are easier to manipulate and "carry" than the real thing. The simplicity of models, compared with reality, lies in the fact that only the relevant properties of reality are represented.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1960s, Scientific method: optimizing applied research decisions, 1962, p. 108 as cited in: Joe H. Ward, Earl Jennings (1973) Introduction to linear models. p. 4.

Hans Freudenthal photo

“No scientist is as model minded as is the statistician; in no other branch of science is the word model as often and consciously used as in statistics.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Source: The Concept and the Role of the Model in Mathematics and Natural and Social Sciences (1961), p. 79; Part of the article "Models in applied probability", published earlier in Synthese, 12 (1960), p. 204-210.

Related topics