The politics of modelling: Numbers between science and policy

Climate change and COVID-19 have brought mathematical models into the forefront of politics and decision-making, where they are now being used to justify momentous and often controversial decisions. Such models are technically very complex, and sources of political authority. Yet disagreement among experts fuels a growing uneasiness about the quality and significance of the numbers that models produce. This multidisciplinary volume takes a critical look at the intersections of the technical and the political aspects of models. Our goal is to help unravel the meanings and implications of models in the real world, for readers that include decision makers, policy analysts, journalists, scholars … and even modellers.