Making Sense of Chaos
Making Sense of Chaos by J. Doyne Farmer is one of 2026's most credible books, appearing on 1 of the year's most respected lists, including Bloomberg, for a Consensus Score of 15 out of 100.
Appears on these lists
Our take
AI-draftedFarmer, a physicist-turned-economist associated with the Santa Fe Institute's complexity science tradition, argues that agent-based computer models fed by huge datasets can outperform the elegant but brittle equilibrium models that dominate mainstream economics. Farmer is not an outsider potshotting the discipline — he's spent decades building the computational tools he's proposing, including models that reportedly outperformed banks' own crash forecasts.
In the press
“Farmer convincingly argues that by using big data and today's more powerful computers, we can build more realistic models and simulations of the global economy.”
Tej Parikh, Financial Times
How the Consensus Score is calculated
Our Consensus Score is our own transparent editorial metric — not a user rating. It weighs each list by the credibility of its source, how recent the listing is, and any award status. Here is the full breakdown.
| Source | Authority | Recency | Award | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bloomberg | 0.80 | 0.85 | 1.00× | 0.68 |
| Weighted sum → Score | 0.68 → 15 | |||
Similar consensus books
Because they appear on some of the same lists.
Frequently asked
What lists is Making Sense of Chaos on?
Making Sense of Chaos appears on 1 list in our 2026 corpus, including Bloomberg.
What is its Consensus Score?
Making Sense of Chaos has a Consensus Score of 15 out of 100, our transparent editorial measure of how many credible lists agree on it.