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I found this piece on psychohistory by Isaac Asimov to be very intriguing, but at the same time somewhat confusing. Asimov defines psychohistory to be a branch of mathematics which “deals with the reactions of human conglomerates to fixed social and economic stimuli”, but also says that this is accomplished using non-mathematical methods and concepts. This left me confused as to how psychohistory can be a branch of mathematics which doesn’t use mathematical concepts, but Asimov does not explain this much further. I also don’t believe that the story-like writing style of this piece is an effective way to help the readers understand psychohistory. With no background knowledge of what the two people are talking about, it’s hard to follow the conversation completely. But, overall the piece is interesting and opens many interesting questions, such as how much should the public know in regards to the use of psychohistory. The student J-OS said that “the social issues we try to solve are never answered through one set of mathematical data, but rather through the relations and trends between multiple data sets recorded by our society.” I think this is a good way to look at psychohistory and to gain a better understanding of it.