| > I have it on good authority that this is still going on Do you mean making simplifying assumptions to make a problem tractable? Of course it’s still going on. It has to be, otherwise you just cannot do anything. > Assume the penguin's beak is a cone It is impossible to consider the true shape of a penguin’s beak for several reasons: - you’d need to go all the way down to the electron clouds of the atoms of the beak, at which point the very concept of shape is shaky - every penguin has a different beak so even if you describe perfectly one of them, it does not necessarily make your calculation more realistic in general. There is a spectrum of approximations one can make, but a cone is a sensible shape at a first order. It’s also simple enough that students can actually do it without years of experience and very advanced tools. What do you think they should do instead? |
I totally understand why simplifying assumptions are helpful in modelling and definitely don’t need you to explain that. It also is a bit ridiculous if you think literally about it which makes it something that is fun to laugh about as here.