You’ve got a complex system and it spews out a lot of wonderful numbers that enable you to measure some factors. But there are other factors that are terribly important, [yet] there’s no precise numbering you can put to these factors. You know they’re important, but you don’t have the numbers. Well practically everybody (1) overweighs the stuff that can be numbered, because it yields to the statistical techniques they’re taught in academia, and (2) doesn’t mix in the hard-to-measure stuff that may be more important. That is a mistake I’ve tried all my life to avoid, and I have no regrets for having done that.
Charlie Munger – Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (1924-2023), from his Herb Kay Undergraduate Lecture “Academic Economics: Strengths and Faults After Considering Interdisciplinary Needs” at the Economics Department at University of California, Santa Barbara (October 3rd, 2003)