Subject: Stocks and Flows

Posted by Niall Palfreyman on 3/3/2004
In Reply To:Stocks and Flows Posted by Lees Stuntz on 3/2/2004

Message:

I slowly despair of spreading the SD gospel - I find it very difficult to pursuade people that it's worth their while to take a second look.
Which I find doubly alarming here in Bavaria, where they are currently chopping one year off the standard high school curriculum, and could well make use of SD's ability to integrate divergent skills into one lesson.

However I do think that there are a number of aspects which are important to bring across to someone looking for the first time at SD:

1. I find it very important to use a variety of examples ranging from the very concrete to the more abstract. If I pitch my first example too abstract, then people's eyes glaze right over. On the other hand, if I leave it at just one very concrete example, people see no power in the method.

2. These examples should be geared to the interests of the listener. I personally find that _my_ eyes glaze over as soon as examples come from finance, stock-taking or management - which covers about 90% of the examples I see in the literature. I must confess to be totally ignorant of (and - sorry, Lees - totally uninterested in) the difference between debt and deficit. However as soon as the examples deal with something alive and tangible like, say, CO2 emissions or karibou migration, my eyes light up again.

In sum, I think it is important that the first example should be as concrete and everyday as possible to make the whole topic of SD accessible. The next examples should then move towards the more abstract, but taking care to move in the direction of the person's interests. I'm thinking of a seminar I'll be holding for university teachers next month, and I guess a reasonable progression for them would be i. Births, deaths and population size.
ii. Introduce predation into population example, since this poses the problem of whether the number of predators is itself changing.
iii. The Lorax - a variety of levels of abstraction including chopping trees and making money.
iv. Something abstract, but still personal, like the "Hamlet" lesson that used to be around. (Where is it now, by the way?) v. Modelling some topic of personal interest to the seminar participants.

Best wishes,
Niall Palfreyman.