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Useless Arithmetic
- Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
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Summary
Writing for the general, nonmathematician reader, the authors begin with a riveting account of the extinction of the North Atlantic cod on the Grand Banks of Canada.
The book offers fascinating case studies depicting how the seductiveness of quantitative models has led to unmanageable nuclear waste-disposal practices, poisoned mining sites, unjustifiable faith in predicted sea level rise rates, bad predictions of future shoreline erosion rates, over-optimistic cost estimates of artificial beaches, and a host of other thorny problems.
Critic reviews
"This book is a welcome antidote to the blind use of supposedly quantitative models." (American Scientist)