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> All models are wrong, but some are useful.

Exactly.

All predictions are wrong and make no sense for partially observable, multiple causation, mostly stochastic phenomena. It will never be the same.




Except that this model was useful.

The Titanic's sister ship (the Brittanic) was torpedoed during WW1 and sunk. However, the lesson of the Titanic (too few lifeboats) had been learnt, and only 26 people died.

I don't know what point you are trying to make - yes, I agree that history never repeats, but lessons can be learnt from it, and they can be quantified and they can be useful.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1291331/


>> The Titanic's sister ship (the Brittanic) was torpedoed during WW1 and sunk. However, the lesson of the Titanic (too few lifeboats) had been learnt, and only 26 people died.

This happened because they made a _statistical_ model of the Titanic disaster, and learned from it? Like, they actually crunched the numbers and plotted a few curves etc, and then said "aha, we need more boats"?

I kind of doubt it, and if it wasn't the case then you can't very well talk about a "model", in this context. It's more like they had a theory of what factor most heavily affected survival and acted on it. But I'd be really surprised to find statistics played any role in this.


This happened because they made a _statistical_ model of the Titanic disaster, and learned from it?

No - statistics as the discipline that we think of today wasn't really around until the work of Gosset[1] and Fisher[2] which was done a few years after this.

I'm sure you noted that I was very careful with what I claimed: "the lesson of the Titanic (too few lifeboats) had been learnt".

These days we'd quantify the lesson with statistics. Then, they didn't have that tool.

Instead, we have testimony[3] relaying the same story: Just one question. Have you any notion as to which class the majority of passengers in your boat belonged? - (A.) I think they belonged mostly to the third or second. I could not recognise them when I saw them in the first class, and I should have known them if there were any prominent people. (Q.) Most of them were in the boat when you came along? - (A.) No. (Q.) You put them in? - (A.) No. Mr. Ismay tried to walk round and get a lot of women to come to our boat. He took them across to the starboard side then - our boat was standing - I stood by my boat a good ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. (Q.) At that time did the women display a disinclination to enter the boat? - (A.) Yes."

So yes, I agree - it was a theory, which our modern modelling tools can show matched well with what the statistics showed happened.

My whole point is that this is very useful, unlike the OP who dismissed it as useless.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sealy_Gosset

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fisher

[3] http://www.titanicinquiry.org/BOTInq/BOTInq33Header.php


My point was in my first comment.

OK, tell me, please, what it is that you can predict? That some John Doe, having the first class ticket in a cabin next to the exit would survive the collision of the next Titanic with a new iceberg? That being a woman gives you better chances to secure a seat in a lifeboat? What is the meaning of the word "predict" here?


Yes.




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