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The Morality of Mathematics

Dave sent me a link a recent article in The Economist, "Let's talk about figures," which caused me to, in turn, wonder about the morality of mathematics in the context of current world economic developments.

As a layman, I tend to lay much of the responsibility for the current economic messiness at the feet of well-paid "quants" developing elaborate economic models that, to my way of thinking, focus on minimizing risk and maximizing return, which is good, but at the expense of failing to understand the associated moral hazards, which is bad.

This then leads me to wonder whether we explore the notion of morality in mathematics in our education programs.  Now my formal mathematical education in 1965 and my memory may be failing me, but I don't recall any such discussions in my courses.  Nor do I recall an recent press on this matter.  Certainly I didn't see any treatment of the matter in The Economist article. 

Googling "The Morality of Mathematics" produces some 455,000 hits in some 29.7 billion pages (WWW FAQs: How Many websites are there?) on the visible web suggesting to me that "The Morality of Mathematcs" may not be receiving much attention.  Yes, I understand that I am employing a from-the-hip search strategy.  Still, one wonders about the importance of and interest in the subject.

Posted on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 09:01AM by Registered CommenterJames Drogan | Comments1 Comment

Reader Comments (1)

Well are you in fact asking the right question ? Mathematics is a tool for understanding and analyzing a complex world. How one uses that tool would seem to be the charge on the user. But in fact in the analytical disciplines there is such a thing as "model specification error"; i.e. blindly applying a technique w/o understanding either the underlying structure of the real world or the gaps between your models and that reality. Gauss invented linear regression to minimize data errors in reducing geographic survey data not to estimate the nature and structure of the world. In other words not only does one have specification error but the models were driven by statistical parameter estimations that have in fact proven false to fact - which was predictable, predicted and inherent in the approach.
One of my favorite TV shows is NUMB3RS which shows myriad real-world applications of math but also is pretty good drama and among other things always revolves around serious, true and accurately depicted real-world problems. What the show shows early in each one is the struggle to correctly frame the problem and understand it's structure and ramifications before applying yet another amazing applied math technique. That's where the real challenge lies, though perhaps it doesn't get enough emphasis, though the show has had several episodes where mis-specification and mis-understandings have results in deaths.
Pretending that sophisticated math is a substitute for judgment leads us to these sorts of messes. On the other hand math really works and one can achieve powerful results with the right investigation, right thinking and right tools.
March 23, 2008 | Unregistered Commenterdblwyo

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