Thursday, January 09, 2014

von Neumann on Models

Quotations by John von NeumannI found this in James Gleick's Chaos:
"The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work."

-- John von Neumann (who had a dog named "Inverse")

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