Mathematics And Economics

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30769, 5 June 1965, Page 4

Mathematics And Economics

, (From the “New York Times.”) The mathematical economists are apparently winning out over their less quantitative brethren both here and in Moscow. In the same ! week that the Soviet Government gave the Lenin Prize to three prominent econometricians, the chairman of Barnard's economics depart-

j ment resigned in protest ; against the mathematical economists’ rising influence at Columbia. No doubt there are good reasons for this trend, and I the mathematical economics of the future may be a far 'more useful and precise (thing than the sloppy verbal /systems that long ago were ’ recognised as constituting the (dismal science. But some I other consequences are even | more probable. In a decade Jor two, for example, it may i seem incredible that men (once thought of the difference .; between capitalism and comI munism as the clash between , Adam Smith's freedom and /Karl Marx's collectivism. In that more sophisticated ’(era, the difference between J the two systems may be .! widely recognised as the coh/trast between, say Jones’s I system of nonlinear , difference-differential equa- , tions with invariant parameters as against Petrov’s , matrices. all of whose I! elements are stochastic .variables entering into a /Markov chain. Then the , controversy would be in such . a rarefied atmosphere that nobody could understand it . well enough to get passionate . about it. A comforting thought in this thermonuj clear era.