Talk:George E. P. Box

From Wikiquote

[edit] The importance of the purpose for which the model was intended

All this time, I thought this quote was an original from my graduate student advisor, David H. Gustafson. Both were at University of Wisconsin and no doubt, David heard it first from George.

The way David told it to me 30 years ago, it had extra significance. It went something like this:

"All models are wrong, and the value of any model is only to the extent to which it supports the purpose for which it was built."

The two keys lessons for me were: (1) don't look to any model for pure "truth and beauty" and (2) You are likely to go wrong if you try to make use a model for a purpose other than what it was designed. For example, if you try to use "ICD9" or "ICD10" as a model of classifying adverse drug reactions, rather than just for medical billing, you may be disappointed.

As documented in: Box, George E. P., J. American Statistical Assoc., Vol 74, Number 365, March 1979, "Some Problems of Statistics of Everyday Life" [1]

An early quote of this idea was: "Models, of course, are never true, but fortunately it is only necessary that they be useful."