System Dynamics Search Index at optimlator.com

This forum contains all archives from the SD Mailing list (go to http://www.systemdynamics.org/forum/ for more information). This is here as a read-only resource, please post any SD related questions to the SD Discussion forum.
Locked
"Jaideep Mukherjee"
Junior Member
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Mar 29, 2002 3:39 am

System Dynamics Search Index at optimlator.com

Post by "Jaideep Mukherjee" »

Dear SD Community

Greetings

The search engine on my website is Netscape-ready now.

www.optimlator.com

For those who are not aware of this search engine - it allows you to input
keywords (with Boolean operators to refine/expand searches) to search all
the past system dynamics mailing list archives. Because of a Visual Basic
introduced snafu, the engine wasnt working properly with Netscape. As
usual, the Microsoft related/introduced problem was very easily solved using
a PERL program.

Thanks to all who responded with their comments - I have tried to
incorporate your comments as much as possible. Please keep them coming,
especially suggestions for mprovement.

Best regards and thanks,

Jaideep


Jaideep Mukherjee, Ph. D.
jaideep@optimlator.com
"Jaideep Mukherjee"
Junior Member
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Mar 29, 2002 3:39 am

System Dynamics Search Index at optimlator.com

Post by "Jaideep Mukherjee" »

Dear SD Community

I have updated the search index at optimlator.com to include all posts till
December 29, 1999. These new additions (about 2 months worth) are in a much
cleaner format, thanks to Bob Eberleins suggestion - namely, to remove the
header junk before each email and to just have the Subject, Date, and the
Name
of Sender on top of each posting. Hence these will be easier to navigate and
understand. You may try a recent topic by typing, for example, "resource
allocation
models" in the search index and you will see what I mean. The new results
have the subject, date and sender name clearly shown, so you can quickly
find what you are looking for.

Also, while trying to search for "optimization" I found that "optimization"
gives 82 results, whereas "optimisation" with an "s", not "z", yields 38
results, in very similar subject headings - such as "Optimization and SD" ,
"Optimisation in System Dynamics ", "Optimisation in SD" etc., etc.

SO, you may want to look at the different ways your query may be expressed
to get the full range of answers available.

I will be doing a major update of the site soon. Thinking of putting up a
survey on the use of SD in academia/industry/consultancy organizations, its
use relative to other decision support techniques, how it can improve as we
march into the 21st century, among other things. Please let me know which
questions YOU would like to be answered. If you can ask it in the form of a
MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTION that will help a lot, for example, if your question
is:

If you teach in academia, what percentage of your teaching primarily
relates to SD/ST?

it may be alternatively put as follows (this format is PREFERABLE for me):

If you teach in academia, the percentage of your teaching that
primarily relates to SD/ST is:

1. < 25 %

2. 26 - 50 %

3. 51 - 75 %

4. 76 - 100 %

The second type will be easier for me to handle in the survey.

I will wait for about 7 to 10 days before unleashing this survey onto the
world. Please participate if you are interested in the future of SD - this
survey may help give direction for future software development, for
consulting companies, for professors teaching SD in universities. Example:
if the survey reveals that most people find SD beneficial only for
communication/insight generation, then software vendors can focus on that
and consultants can also get focused on using/selling SD for what it is best
at or perceived to be best at, rather than for specific, detailed OR-type
studies that sometimes people do with SD, and for which many packages are
ill-suited. On the other hand, if people want/prefer SD for specific policy
prescriptions, then the above insight-generation paradigm may not really
work, and which tends to give SD a really bad name in some circles as being
too fluffy for any practical purpose. In that case, software development
could focus more on how to incorporate huge uncertainties and complexities
in the models and still keep them manageable. We have had great debates on
this list between the insight-ers and the data-strong types (cant think of
better words right now). There is another place where this survey may be
useful: in academia - despite the fact that SD is as old as many OR
techniques (say LP), it has not been very popular in the mainstream
applications. Why is this so and in such a case how can professors do a
better/different job of popularizing it - or to make it so useful that the
technique sells itself.

By the way, this concern is not just that for SDers - I have read about the
same problems in the hard-core OR community too, especially with regard to
the (lack of) popularity of its heavily mathematical Operations Research
journal - the articles are so specific and mathematical that only PhDs in
that particular field can understand the articles, and only editorials are
the most widely read pieces from the full journal; it may explain also the
popularity of the journal Interfaces, as it is much more user-friendly. By
the way SDR does not suffer from this, as most authors in it do write and
explain things very well, and the editors take care of this.

That is all for now - hope all of you have taken care of the Y2K bugs in
your computers. (So far US $600 billion have been spent on this problem, and
23 trillion lines of code have been changed; seems too much but that is what
I remember from a news item). The fact that there will be a cascade of Y2K
arrivals starting from the International Date Line, means that by looking at
how Y2K effects occur in different regions of the world, we can find out how
bad the problem really was and whether all this hoopla was worth it. (Check
the book Normal Accidents to read more on how these things happen).

Best regards and best wishes to everyone for the coming new year and
millennium,

Jaideep
From: "Jaideep Mukherjee" <
jaideep@optimlator.com>

Jaideep Mukherjee, PhD
713 523 2713
www.optimlator.com
Locked