What is it about?
The knowledge asymmetry between developers and users of mathematical models has been exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This short piece offers five simple rules to help society and modellers to achieve a modicum of reciprocal domestication.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Models are no longer confined to developers and institutions making use of them, but invest the entire social life.
Perspectives
All instance of quantification, be these of visible (models, statistics) or invisible (AI & big data) increasingly shape the real. More attention should be paid to how these numbers are understood and used. Mathematical modelling is particularly affected as it is not a discipline and lacks standardized quality criteria and principles.
Professor Andrea Saltelli
University Pompeo Fabra, Barcelona School of Management
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto, Nature, June 2020, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1038/d41586-020-01812-9.
You can read the full text:
Resources
A modelling manifesto
Thirty slides to summarize the manifesto
Supplementary material to the Manifesto
About 20,000 words and 260 reference to support the main article.
The Strange Numbers of Covid-19, Argumenta 7, 1, 97-107.
Article on Argumenta by Annibale Biggeri, Andrea Saltelli, 2021, 7, 1, 97-107. Abstract: Never as with the present pandemics, numbers and the attendant activities of measuring and modelling have taken centre-stage. Yet these numbers, often delivered by academicians and media alike with extraordinary precision, rely on a rich repertoire of assumptions, including forms of bias, that can significantly skew both the numbers per se and the trust we repose in them. We discuss the issue in relation to a particular case relative to the numbers on excess mortality during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy. We conclude with some considerations about the use of science at the science policy interface in situations where facts are uncertain, stakes high, values in dispute and decision urgent. Abstra
Part of UNESCO report: Andrea Saltelli, 2022, Reckoning with uncertainty, social sciences lessons for mathematical modeling.
Part of a larger UNESCO report on mathematics, in "Mathematics for action: supporting science-based decision-making", UNESCO [62236], 2022, Dhersin, Jean-Stéphane, Kaper, Hans, Ndifon, Wilfred, Roberts, Fred, Rousseau, Christiane, Ziegler, Günter M., Editors. see https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000380883.locale=en A short summary of the Nature manifesto for a broad non-technical audience
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
