Assumption Quote by John Maynard Keynes

“Economists are all too often preoccupied with petty mathematical problems of interest only to themselves. This obsession with mathematics is an easy way of…

— Thomas Piketty

“To put it bluntly, the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often…

— Thomas Piketty

“The mathematical economists have commonly been mathematicians first and economists afterward, disposed to oversimplify the data and underestimate the divergence between their premises and…

— Frank H. Knight

The temptation to use mathematics is irresistible for economists. It appears to convey the appropriate air of scientific authority and precision to economists' musings.

— Paul Ormerod

...the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at…

— Thomas Piketty

Mathematical economics is old enough to be respectable, but not all economists respect it. It has powerful supporters and impressive testimonials, yet many capable…

— James R Newman

For far too long economists have sought to define themselves in terms of their supposedly scientific methods. In fact, those methods rely on an…

— Thomas Piketty

In the 1940s, economics started getting highly mathematical. It was basically because economists weren't smart enough to write down models of real behavior that…

— Richard Thaler

Conventions of generality and mathematical elegance may be just as much barriers to the attainment and diffusion of knowledge as may contentment with particularity…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Modern economics is sick. Economics has increasingly become an intellectual game played for its own sake and not for its practical consequences for understanding…

— Mark Blaug

In short, I do not write for mathematicians, nor as a mathematician, but as an economist wishing to convince other economists that their science…

— William Stanley Jevons

Economics has become increasingly an arcane branch of mathematics rather than dealing with real economic problems.

— Milton Friedman