All you wanted to do was put a bird feeder in your yard to attract birds and make for a more pleasant morning. And...

When endeavoring to develop an understanding of the nature of something it is generally useful to create a model of some type to aid in surfacing that understanding.

Rich Pictures, Causal Loop Diagrams and Stock & Flow Simulation Models are the three types of models most commonly used.

This is a model depicting the interactions of the Aesop's Fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."

This is a more Traditional Career Model of how education works, with an increased lifetime earnings from going to college. The following are links to the other two models in the series.

• Loan Cost Model
• Savings Model

This common archetype of systems that include relapse or recidivism allows exploration of the unintended effects of increasing upstream capacity and swamping downstream capacity. The increase in the relapse rate eventually returns to swamp upstream capacity as well. A social welfare example, based on a TANF case study, from How Small System Dynamics Models Can Help the Policy Process. N. Ghaffarzadegan, J. Lyneis, GP Richardson. System Dynamics Review 27,1 (2011) 22-44 Conference version at http://bit.ly/HlxtZj

This is a more Traditional Career Model of how education works, with an increased lifetime earnings from going to college. The following are links to the other two models in the series.

• Loan Cost Model
• Savings Model

Introduce the concept of modeling and simulation.

What do activities of these images have in common?

All you wanted to do was put a bird feeder in your yard to attract birds and make for a more pleasant morning. And...

Yesterday's actions are responsible for the world we experience today. And today's actions are responsible for the world that we will experience tomorrow. The "Creating the Future" model is intended to provide a better sense of the common process associated with the unexpected unfolding of the future..

This is a model depicting the interactions of the Aesop's Fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."

Simplest Innovation diffusion model from Sterman's Business Dynamics Ch 9

Introduce the concept of modeling and simulation.

This is a model depicting the interactions of the Aesop's Fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."

All you wanted to do was put a bird feeder in your yard to attract birds and make for a more pleasant morning. And...

Based on a sound realization of reality we need an effective approach to dealing with situations which promotes the requisite understanding to develop a strategy that deals appropriately with the situation. A strategy which also is explicitly designed to minimize unintended consequences and puts in place responses to them should they arise.

To develop insights regarding a situation of interest there are a number of things should be considered to ensure a view of the relevant influences.

Original Insight (#1366) by Gene Bellinger

This is a model depicting the interactions of the Aesop's Fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."

Balancing Loop with Stock & Flow Diagram.

What do activities of these images have in common?

There are about fifteen known archetypes with an interesting set of relationships among them.

SystemsWiki's Musings

All you wanted to do was put a bird feeder in your yard to attract birds and make for a more pleasant morning. And...

This model is derived from the paper "Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened: Creating and Sustaining Process Improvement" by Nelson P. Repenning and John D Sterman. See Insight 752 for a causal loop version of this model.

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