Beware of Economists Peddling Elegant Models
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April 8 (Bloomberg) -- Mathematics can be beguilinglyelegant. It can also be dangerous when people mistake itselegance for truth.
Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity might be thebest example of elegant math, capturing a wide range of subtleand surprising phenomena with remarkable simplicity. Step towardthe practical, though, and physics moves quickly away fromelegance to makeshift usefulness. There’s no pretty expressionfor the operation of a nuclear reactor, or for how air flowspast the swept wings of an aircraft. Understanding demands uglyapproximations, or brute-force simulation on a large computer.