"Economists also use models to learn about the world, but instead of being made of plastic, they are most often composed of diagrams and equations. Like a biology teacher’s plastic model, economic models omit many details to allow us to see what is truly important. Just as the biology teacher’s model does not include all the body’s muscles and capillaries, an economist’s model does not include every feature of the economy."
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N. Gregory Mankiw, Principle of Economics (6th ed., 2012), Ch. 2. Thinking Like an Economist
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Scientific_modelling
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Scientific modelling
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