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billswift comments on Without models - Less Wrong
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A model is a simplified, abstracted representation of an object or system that presents only the information needed by its user. For example, the plastic models of aircraft I built as a kid abstract away everything except the external appearance, a mathematical model of a system shows only those dimensions and relationships useful to the model's users, a control system is a model of the relationships between the stimuli and the response desired by the designer and user of the larger system being controlled (evolution as designer and organism as user in biological analogy).
If I understand this definition correctly, then temperature, as used by a thermostat, is a model of a system: It abstracts away all the details about the energy of individual particles in the system, except for a single scalar value representing the average of all those energies.
Yes, all of the measurements I can think of off-hand are basically one-dimensional models of a system / object.