Last week’s Business Week has an excellent article on the role of complex models in the financial crisis. In it, Emanuel Derman and Paul Wilmott suggest, only partially tongue-in-cheek, a “Hippocratic oath” for modelers:

• I will remember that I didn’t make the world and that it doesn’t satisfy my equations.

• Though I will use models boldly to estimate value, I will not be overly impressed by mathematics.

• I will never sacrifice reality for elegance without explaining why I have done so. Nor will I give the people who use my model false comfort about its accuracy. Instead, I will make explicit its assumptions and oversights.

• I understand that my work may have enormous effects on society and the economy, many of them beyond my comprehension.

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