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Who said it first?

Submitted by Matt Lewis on

Okay, I have used this quote a lot and have probably misattributed it.  Who first said, "All models are wrong.  Some models are useful."?

The concensus of the literature seems to attribute the quote to George Box. 

Just as a point of information, I don't use this quote to malign modeling.  I use it to remind people that models represent a reduced form of reality.  Models are often wonderfully self consistent and predictive, provided the assumptions used in the models are not violated in the reality one attempts to model.

 Matt Lewis

Los Alamos, New Mexico

Wed, 02/25/2009 - 16:37 Permalink