Abstract
My own background and experience have been in statistics. I was trained as a theoretical statistician, and since 1950 I have applied statistical methods to various kinds of research problems, but mainly in medicine and biology. That kind of work seen from my present vantage point could be thought of as having rather narrow, limited scope. Let me elaborate.
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Notes and References
Lincoln E. Moses. “The Response of Graduate Enrollment to Placement Opportunities” Science 44, (1972) 494–497.
Allowing a chain of argument to depend on a false element can in principle be ruinous. It is a Theorem in logic that by assuming a false proposition one can “prove” any Theorem, whether true or not. This is illustrated by an anecdote in which Bertrand Russell was challenged by a skeptic “Then prove that if two equals one I am the Pope.” The immediate reply was “You and the Pope are two. Two equals one. You and the Pope are one. You are the Pope.”
Lincoln E. Moses, “Early Steps Toward a National Energy Information Systems,” Amer. Statistician 33, (1979) 97–101.
D. Freedman, “An Assessment of the READ Model.” To appear in the proceedings of the National Bureau of Standards workshop on energy models. D. Freedman, “On Uncertainties in Model Forecasts,” technical report, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Calif. D. Freedman and R. Sutch, An Assessment of the Federal Energy Data System,” technical report, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Calif. D. Freedman and R. Sutch, “The Demand for Energy in the Year 1990: An Assessment of the Regional Demand Forecasting Model,” technical report, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Calif.
C. Roger Glassey, unpublished memorandum within the Energy Information Administration, May 1979.
This bad news can be carried much further. Suppose that there are infinitely many independent sources of error with standard deviations as shown:
G.E.P. Box, “Statistics and the Environment,” J. Wash. Acad. Sci. 64, 58 (1974).
C. Tjailing Koopmans, “Economics Among the Sciences,” Amer. Econ. Rev. 69, 6 (1979).
Statement of Lincoln E. Moses, Administrator, Energy Information Administration, before the Subcommittee on Energy Regulation of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, U.S. Senate, Oct. 22, 1979.
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Moses, L.E. (1981). Keynote Address: One Statistician’s Observations Concerning Energy Modeling. In: Bayraktar, B.A., Cherniavsky, E.A., Laughton, M.A., Ruff, L.E. (eds) Energy Policy Planning. Nato Conference Series, vol 9. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-1080-8_2
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