A physicist charts a bunch of data for an effect that he's studying, and goes to a mathematician for some explanation for the shape of the curve. The mathematician looks at it, and says that it's easy to write out a formula to describe that data. He starts in, but then the physicist notices that the paper is upside down. He turns it over, and the mathematician exclaims about how it's going to be easy to write out a formula for the curve!
It's a bad joke, but the point is that some of the mathematics used for this sort of thing always contains approximations based on our inability as physicists to map out ABSOLUTE TRUTH™. Our equipment isn't sensitive enough to measure everything to the minutest detail, and in many cases don't even measure some things because we don't know that they are even there. We are learning as we go. We don't have all the observations for this universe, and won't be able to make them all before the universe ends...if it even does end. We have to go with whatever we can get from the data collected, so far.
It's a bad joke, but the point is that some of the mathematics used for this sort of thing always contains approximations based on our inability as physicists to map out ABSOLUTE TRUTH™. Our equipment isn't sensitive enough to measure everything to the minutest detail, and in many cases don't even measure some things because we don't know that they are even there. We are learning as we go. We don't have all the observations for this universe, and won't be able to make them all before the universe ends...if it even does end. We have to go with whatever we can get from the data collected, so far.
If you get to thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around.
