You're reading too much into it. I could have taken out the word "linear" and it would have been fine, but it wasn't exactly a random math term. A linear model

You're reading too much into it. I could have taken out the word "linear" and it would have been fine, but it wasn't exactly a random math term. A linear model is the simplest model, which is sometimes an asset (in some cases, linear regression is the best statistical model for its simplicity) and sometimes makes it crude and underfit to the problem. I was focusing on the latter.