Raghu wrote:
Not really. Words can also be used to mislead but numbers give you an aura of scientific rigor.
it's quite possible to create an aura of scientific rigor by using the right vocabulary: use the word "optimal" instead of "best"; use the word "equilibrium" instead of "balance"; etc. It's not just sociologists who use jargon up the whazoo (sp?). Even more popular among economists, math -- even without stats -- can create such an aura. There are all sorts of economics papers out there that do nothing but explain common-sense or tautological ideas using fancy math (Gary Becker once showed that time was money); often the garbage in (the outrageous assumptions) _exceeds_ the garbage out, so the costs of abstraction from perceived empirical reality exceed the benefits of additional insight into the world. The point is not to reject statistics, jargon, or math. Rather, it is to embrace critical thinking about all three of them. But we need one or two or even all three of them to some extent. It's good to test our views against available evidence (including stats); sometimes common language is too ambiguous; and some theories cannot be understood without some kind of formal analysis. (I think Keynes' theory would have survived intact despite the efforts of his epigoni if he'd stated a formal model more clearly -- hopefully in an appendix, as Marshall did. Of course, if the implications had been clearer, maybe there wouldn't have been a "Keynesian revolution" among economists.) -- Jim Devine / "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in economics, it's the exact opposite." --- Paul Dirac [edited]
