Chapter 7 Reflections

Not actually semantic networks...

I found systems modeling to look like semantic networks, at first. I thought that was what I was looking at for quite a while in fact. Then, as a rat in a maze, I got a bit more excited when I found "the cheese". In other words, the mathematical processes make it different. Okay!

Without much prior work on the subject of mathematical models, this stuff looks intimidating (I'm a 'mathaphobic' as Papert says). I've never used software like this and I'm sure the newer stuff is far beyond what was shown. However, I'm not lost on the utility. I can easily imagine the various paper companies in Maine using similar software to manage forest inventories, as the text illustrated. That would mean the mining, fishing or manufacturing companies could do the same thing. I would imagine that a student playing with the variables to find an ideal solution to some problem would be highly useful, especially if they made it happen.

As far as illustrating a point in class though, I'd have to explore the software further. Students are simply not close enough to the data collecting and math skills required for what I saw in this text. Maybe in a controlled environment like a chemistry or physics class. But there's no way they'd get far enough in a marketing class or an economics class where time is tight and there are too many other demands. Data would have to be brought in which in turn makes this a software exercise rather than a brain exercise. The web is probably full of simulations that do this very thing without the math manipulation required to set it up. Of course this diminishes the psychological benefits of accomplishing that task as well.

Not my most useful chapter, but it was interesting to distinguish models from other programs.

BC