An example in statistics is the expectation operator. You can throw away a lot of detail if you only care about one central moment. And if you need more information about a distribution, add more moments.
Also, this works for public policy. Frame everything as a well functioning market and hope for the best. /s
Well, “think of the other points as (fixed point) + (small perturbation) and reduce your work to handling the perturbation” is literally how modern economic models (DSGE) are studied and then used for public policy.
An example in statistics is the expectation operator. You can throw away a lot of detail if you only care about one central moment. And if you need more information about a distribution, add more moments.
Also, this works for public policy. Frame everything as a well functioning market and hope for the best. /s
But seriously, a nice intuition.