Useful in the lab, maybe, but hopeless in the real world, where problems are multi-faceted, complex, hard to pin down.
"It's complex and hard to pin down," he said.
Understanding why so few women consider a career in engineering is complex and hard to pin down.
The cryptic list of categories seemed an appropriate testament to a nation in flux, too vast and complex to be pinned down by any single narrative.
Generally, although not completely unscientific, the MBTI gives a ridiculously limited and simplified view of human personality, which is a very complex and tricky concept to pin down and study.
His discussion of the "blame instinct", for example, is important because it reminds us of people's impatience with complex causation and tendency to pin everything on one agent.
At Hohai University, in Jiangsu Province, Chen Ajiang, a sociologist who heads the university's Institute of the Environment and Sociology, admitted that the link between pollution and cancer is extremely complex, and it is difficult to pin down cause and effect.
Deception is a complex thing, evanescent and difficult to pin down; it's no accident that the poets describe it with diaphanous imagery like "tangled web" and "tissue of lies". But the federal push for a new device for credibility assessment leaves little room for complexity; the government is looking for a blunt instrument, a way to pick out black and white from among the duplicitous grays.
Pricing for more complex returns can be harder to pin down ahead of time.
However, complex emotional issues can be tricky to pin down.
