I think it's possible to arrive at the conclusions with careful verbal reasoning, but what I'd say writing down the model does is that it *forces* you to confront the precision.

A bit easier to get away with hand-wavy arguments that sound correct but aren't precise about assumptions when using verbal reasoning.

SimpleStacker

I truly believe that writing down mathematical models trains this ability.  It forces you to think carefully about the forces involved, including crucially the difference between a flow and a stock, and how these things relate.

meeeh. Maybe it helps (for some) for tractability and seriously/clearly stating your position. Per Taleb, it's easier to macrobullshit than microbullshit... but I think you can get there quite easily by simple middle-school type verbal reasoning too. (After all, Austrian econ training is all about that; no need for fancy PhDs to get the point)

AskSN

BooksAndArticles

econ

What Makes for an Economist? (FT, Soumaya Keynes)

denlillaapan

> I truly believe that writing down mathematical models trains this ability.  It forces you to think carefully about the forces involved, including crucially the difference between a flow and a stock, and how these things relate.

meeeh. Maybe it helps (for some) for tractability and seriously/clearly stating your position. Per Taleb, it's easier to macrobullshit than microbullshit... but I think you can get there quite easily by simple middle-school type verbal reasoning too. (After all, Austrian econ training is all about that; no need for fancy PhDs to get the point)