But my shift to the serious study of economics gradually weakened my belief in Major Douglas's A+B theorem, which was replaced in my thought by the expression MV = PT.
Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom.
I think critics tend to think that comedy is freakin' math. Like, this is the Pythagorean Theorem. They're not sophisticated enough to know that comedy is fluid, that it evolves, and these organic evolutions are what you have to embrace.
Humans like to think of themselves as unusual. We've got big brains that make it possible for us to think, and we think that we have free will and that our behavior can't be described by some mechanistic set of theorems or ideas. But even in terms of much of our behavior, we really aren't very different from other animals.
When somebody discovers something like the quadratic formula or the Pythagorean theorem, the convention in science is that he can't control that idea. He has to give it away. He publishes it. What's rewarded in science is dissemination of ideas.
To a person of analytical ability, perceptive enough to realise that mathematical equipment was a powerful sword in economics, the world of economics was his or her oyster in 1935. The terrain was strewn with beautiful theorems begging to be picked up and arranged in unified order.
I tend to regard the Coase theorem as a stepping stone on the way to an analysis of an economy with positive transaction costs.
You wouldn't think there was a need for a Coase Theorem, really.
I'm no enthusiast for the Coase Theorem. I don't like it, but it's widely used.
The analysis of variance is not a mathematical theorem, but rather a convenient method of arranging the arithmetic.
