Ventana software support forum

This is a response to Bill Brauns request for thoughts on self-study.

There are a number of possibilities. But, first your statement:

>I sense that I am particularly ill prepared from an algebraic
>point of view.

A facility with algebra is necessary for modeling. If you havent used
algebra, for awhile, you might want a refresher course. (Trigonometry
or Pre-calculus might do the trick). Courses at junior colleges on
these sorts of things are truly excellent -- the people who are
teaching, really want to teach and they do. There are also well written
math books available at places like Borders or Amazon.com for a truly
independent study.

Concerning books: Your choice of Principles of Systems is very good.
Of the other books you mentioned, I would pick out the Richards and Pugh
Intro to SD Modeling with DYNAMO. The book is exceptionally well
written and provides a well-structured, broad grounding in system
dynamics from the philosophical foundations to causal loop diagramming
to modeling. The one drawback to the book is that it uses DYNAMO, the
original system dynamics environment. This means you will need to
translate into the environment you are using (Powersim, I believe you
said). That may be a pain, but is hardly insurmountable -- the
equations that you write in Powersim will be mostly the same as those
given for DYNAMO. (Incidentally, DYNAMO is available from Pugh-Roberts
and has its loyal supporters, however it does lack a graphical front end
(you cannot define a model by "drawing" on the screen, but instead type
in equations)).

Elements of the SD Method is a very nice collection of essays. It makes
for good reading before bed, at the beach, or whenever you dont have a
computer handy.

You did not mention Forresters Industrial Dynamics. This book is a
classic. And covers some of the same ground as the Richardson and Pugh
book. Compared to Richardson and Pugh, Industrial Dynamics is not as
gentle an introduction and it does not emphasize feedback as much
(Industrial Dynamics does not contain any causal loop diagrams, which
may actually have been developed later -- I believe by Ed Roberts?). On
the other hand the book is written with Forresters usual extraordinary
clarity. And, it anticipates almost every development in the field
since. (In fact on my bluer days I wonder if there has been any
significant advance in SD since Industrial Dynamics).

Finally, there are a number of courses that might be doable even though
you have committments to your business. A number of consulting/software
firms offer short-courses (a couple of days to a week) in sytem dynamics
(High Performance Systems, Powersim, Ventana, Innovation Associates, GKA
among others). MIT offers a couple of short courses in SD as well as a
distance course by satellite and one over the Web. There are other
courses as well which, perhaps, others on the list could mention. The
newsletter the Systems Thinker (from Pegasus) provides dates and places
for the various short courses.

Regards,
Jim Hines
MIT and LeapTec
From: Jim Hines <jimhines@interserv.com>