The Model Thinker by Scott E. Page

Abstract

The 12th chapter of The Model Thinker begins with a quote by Claude Shannon:“Information is the resolution of uncertainty.”Making sense out of the deluge of information which virtually exists in today’s world requires much more than a unidimensional approach. With information comes complexity, and with complexity one needs to responsibly make sense out of it, be it to understand the world better or even to offer solutions to the problems at hand. Scott E. Page offers that solution through his book, The Model Thinker, which may very well serve as a manual to start learning about the ‘many-model approach’. The author bolsters his claim to harness the power of this many-model approach by quite rightly saying that, “we achieve wisdom through a multiplicity of lenses”. From politics, economics, market dynamics, social issues to interpreting disease epidemiology and contagions requires professionals and academics to think beyond the chaos of data, cohesively arranging them into information, deriving knowledge from it and applying what is learned in various aspects, thus forging the basis of wisdom. Not only does the author succeed in advocating this motion in the first few pages of his book, but he goes on to inform the reader of the 25 classes of modelling approaches as well. The book offers theoretical (or mathematical) explanations of each model, and the last few chapters are dedicated to how multiple models can be applied to solve real-life problems. A recommended read for anyone who is stepping into the world of dealing with data.