Spherical cow
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Spherical cow is a metaphor for highly simplified scientific models of reality. The phrase comes from a joke about theoretical physicists:
Milk production at a dairy farm was low so the farmer wrote to the local university, asking help from academia. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and two weeks of intensive on-site investigation took place. The scholars then returned to the university, notebooks crammed with data, where the task of writing the report was left to the team leader. Shortly thereafter the farmer received the write-up, and opened it to read on the first line: "Consider a spherical cow. . . ."[1]
As with any mathematical joke, it is told in many variants.[2]
[edit] See also
- Approximation
- Biological neuron models, in which neurons are treated as spheres.
[edit] References
- ^ Harte, John (1988), Consider a Spherical Cow: A Course in Environmental Problem Solving, University Science Books, ISBN 978-0935702583.
- ^ Kirkman, T. W. (1996). Spherical Cow: A Simple Model. Statistics to Use. Retrieved on 2007-02-19.
