Why models?

As scientists, our goal is to learn about how nature works. We can make observations and measurements, and these are usually in the service of gaining an understanding of how nature works. In their book Physical Biology of the Cell, Phillips, et al. write that “…quantitative data demand quantitative models and, conversely, …quantitative models need to provide experimentally testable quantitative predictions about biological phenomena.” It is in this spirit that we approach parametric inference. Our goal is to model the process of data generation, and using the measured data to learn about the model. This leads to knowledge.

As we head into statistical modeling, it is important to remind yourself of what we mean by the word “model.” Please re-read the section on statistical modeling from our lesson introducing probability.