Model Building

When I was a student, we were beaten over the head with model building and model issues mostly from a Systems Theory perspective.

However, I changed fields on entering the workplace. The places I've worked since don't offer much in (4).

What is Model Building? Is this a specific, named field of study? Abstract or practical?

In my education we didn't learn Model building, as such.  

We picked-up research techniques and how to design experiments in the Science and Technical departments with complete reliance on Statistical Mechanics.  The Math department was heavy into Math-for-Math's-sake at the upper regions and heavy into superficial formulaic How-to-Solve-It applications at the undergrad level.  The Philosophy dept. offered a couple of sparsely taken, non-required, Logic classes; Epistemology was Kant, Kant, Kant and only then ... oh, yeah: Hume.  I don't recall any courses in Mathematical Philosophy, Mathematical Logic, or Systems Theory.

A doo run-run-run, a doo run-run

It was an engineering course, and Control Theory involved some work with proportional, integral and differential theory as a design technique - which is modelling of a sort.

There was also some numerical content about the limitations of computing with approximate numbers - which was very relevant back then, when people would sometimes have to try to do DSP in a 16-bit integer environment.

There was no hint of epistemology or any other kind of philosophy.

I don't work for an organisation now, so I can read what I like, when I like. :)

1 As school... are you kidding? In the university... informally...as the things appear.. never in detail in one single credit.

2... no.. only seminars in each one of the issues modelled

3 Ja ja ja jjajaa

4 Modelling and limitations are taken more seriously when you work in active research.. you ahve to be very careful....that's all... no particualr training... more thant be careful what you say.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

1. No.  Not in any way.  (Although two of my siblings are architects, and they were required to build models, but not the kind you're talking about....)

2. Structured instruction (is that redundant?) and classes in general, yes, <snark> but in /model building specifically, no.  I believe it was covered in some courses, just not courses I took.

3.  I was required to take a logic course.  (And an ethics course.)

4.  No.

For the record, I was a humanities major of the fuzziest kind.  But I freakin' loved that logic course.

I almost went to modeling school, but beauty college seemed more practical.

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes

Eng Lit pure and undiluted was my fare, so no models. I can't recall mathematicians or economists I knew talking about model-building, so it can't have had them on fire.

I brushed up against philosophical logic (this was at Oxford, where it's something of a local speciality) on social occasions called think-ins, the object of which was to attempt to approach truth (or demonstrate the vanity of the enterprise) on a given topic, (like What Is Truth?), using peer-reviewed and chopped-to-bits logic, and an approach I don't think I'd be far wrong in calling phenomenological, which generally ended in some solipsistic rathole. These were voluntary events with no teaching involved, though it was worth just soaking some of the stuff up.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

1. I once took a semester survey course in operations research. The profesor not only introduced all kinds of standard problems but tried to teach modelling as a skill. We would often discuss modelling a problem - that is, going from a verbal, not necessarily very explicit or complete, description of a situation to a mathematical formulation. I loved it. Most of my classmates hated it.

2. The course I metion in 1 was required for a mth degree.

3. I had an elective semester course I first-order logic. I had several diferential equations courses in both math and physics, as we as mechanics, but he systems theory I had to pick up on my own. There was a Systems nd control specialisationin my physics facult, but none of its courses where  available to me, nor was I particularly intereste at the time. I picked up my epistemology from two year-long courses in philosophy in high school (required), and from reading philosophical writings by physicists. There was some epistemological insight in two seester-long advanced probability courses I took. I got my philosophy of mathemacs from reading its history.

4. LOL

PS. I consider modelling a skill, not am academic discipline. As they say, it is an art, not a science. The closest I have come to teaching it is an advanced undegraduate course in finite mathematics course which involved algorithms. I think modelling should be taught but it would be hard and underappreciated by instructors and sudents alike.


"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

After many years in the field, I became acquainted with this type of scenario modeling. (example here.)

The visual choreography of environmental conditions and objectives depends on the number of participants.

Surprisingly, likely strategic outcomes were always fewer than initially imagined.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

I'm so disappointed, I thought this diary was about you teaching us model-building.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

model building.

Building models is required for preliminary and advanced organic chemistry courses however.   It's not given as a separate course that I know of - but it is definitely an active part of the curriculum.

Modeling?  Did someone say modeling?  I've been model building since I was nine.  And no, I never learned any of this in a school.

Obviously this term applies to a wide variety of skills.

flying model airplanes

historical preservation proposals

furniture design

And of course, all the FUN modeling these days employs computer illustration software.

Isn't this enough kinds of model building?  Sorry.  Nevermind.


"Remember the I35W bridge--who needs terrorists when there are Republicans"

There were courses on this in the mathematics and statistics (and, I assume, engineering) departments, but, as they were so few, it was nearly impossible for anyone outside of those departments to sign up, given that math and stats students, of course, had the first shot at registration.  That's one thing that infuriated me about the Nott'm econ program: Academic economists are expected to write papers with models -- the models typically coming at the end after the research is summarized.  Professional economists are expected to build and use models at their jobs.  But there was none of this -- no effort to prepare us for what would be, for better or worse (and I happen to think economists use models too much), expected in the future.

</mini-rant>

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!