Posted by tpc at March 4th, 2009

The newspaper (26 Feb) reported an economist made this prediction. That’s an alarming figure, but not because the economy is so bad, rather the mathematics is so bad. Can anyone without divine powers get that kind of accuracy? So this Mr Irvin Seah’s job loss model probably takes into account whether the cleaning lady at the coffeeshop downstairs can keep her job, since he is able to predict job losses to the exact number. With such clever economists, no one wonder everyone is bashing the number crunchers. Including, Warren Buffet’s famous or infamous:

Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

This blog is turning out to be something like a mini version of John Allen Paulos’ “A Mathematician reads the newspapers.” By the way, Paulos is apparently in Singapore this week and giving a talk at NTU.

The said article is available here if you care to read it.