Teaching the Viable Systems Model to people without an organizational setting to frame the exercise can be challenging. It is not easy to introduce new ideas and terms in the abstract and help people gain facility in their application without examples. Case studies are helpful here but there is another alternative… <article>
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Computerised forecasting techniques are certainly useful for stores, but flawed when it comes to complex human issues…..
“You can get a good model statistically that fits well for a group but it doesn’t predict well for individuals, ” he says (David Cooke, professor of forensic clinical psychology at the Douglas Inch Centre and Glasgow Caledonian University). “
A Bayesian Approach to Short-Term Forecasting, P. J. Harrison and C. F. Stevens, Operational Research Quarterly (1970-1977), Vol. 22, No. 4 (Dec., 1971), pp. 341-362 (article consists of 22 pages); Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals on behalf of the Operational Research Society available through JSTOR: Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3008187
A new approach to short-term forecasting is described, based on Bayesian principles. The performance of conventional systems is often upset by the occurrence of changes in trend and slope, or transients. In this approach events of this nature are modelled explicitly, and successive data points are used to calculate the posterior probabilities of such events at each instant of time. The system produces not only single-figure forecasts but distributions of trend and slope values which are relevant to subsequent decisions based on forecasts.
[dhcs: May 2010 | note that this is essentially a mirror of a Squidoo Lens constructed while I was involved in their beta program. It has not been kept up-to date since early 2006; with my recent “rediscovery” of it I will be bringing it up to date here, refreshing it, including fixing or striking any connections that have suffered from “web link rot” and perhaps this refurbishment might even lead to reflecting it back to its original site to see if it can fulfill the original design intent….)
“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty…….. but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”— Richard Buckminster Fuller
What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. — Murray Gell-Mann
Armed with a sense of humor and laypeople’s terms, Nobel winner Murray Gell-Mann drops some knowledge on TEDsters about particle physics, asking questions like, Are elegant equations more likely to be right than inelegant ones?
Vigilante Veneration
My sons collected the “mutant” comic books before they went “big time” – I think without too much ill effect. But what if ? – could the “model” described here be considered “useful” ?
“It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.”— Michio Kaku
“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”— Karl Popper
I was listening to an interesting , albeit very unstructured, discussion on the radio the other day and one of the participants finally burst out: “Your model is simply wrong.” As if THAT settled the whole matter. Well I’m sorry, but that was not ‘game, set and match’ at all. However, in the “interest of time,” the host stepped in and moved the discussion to another important matter of the day.