Brief discussion Monday night in 5033 regarding the value of being able to map, model, chart and otherwise graphically depict ideas in order to understand them, which I think is often a very useful approach to studying in general, and especially in preparing for our comprehensive examinations here.
However, it’s also obvious that illustration doesn’t necessarily entail implementation. For example, IBM is in the process of patenting this (note illustration #8). I suspect that a flow chart does not provide adequate monitoring and management of chaotic situations, regardless of the number of feedback loops involved.
And, even more heartbreakingly, I now understand that it’s possible to do an excellent outline of a comps question and then NOT implement that outline in the writing of the actual response. Nuff said.
Here’s a quote from a piece in Fortune from Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb lambasting the popularity of financial engineering models:
“We like models because they do not require experience and can be taught by a 33-year-old assistant professor.”
that I like almost as much as the classic one from George Box (“All models are wrong, but some models are useful.”) Read more…
Apropos of the 5033 seminar: a useful list of resources from the philosophy department at Carnegie Mellon and the Overcoming Bias blog from the philosophy faculty at Oxford. (“Thinker toys”: a phrase that always make me recall Bob Benjamin at Syracuse with great fondness.) How will the availability of this type of tool further promote the commodification of knowledge and/or inform information literacy practices? To be continued by someone… (perhaps with the appropriate argument mapping tool in place!)
Here is Frank Upward’s Records Continuum model and two of his seminal papers:
Structuring the Records Continuum, Part One
Structuring the Records Continuum, Part Two
Of course, what I’m really interested in isn’t here: it’s what informs the “actor’s” decision-making that precipitates the “act” (at which point the documentation process starts in this model.) In fact, you might call the missing (non-archival) part of the model: reinventing relevance.
Since I firmly adhere to statistician George Box’s dictum that “all models are wrong, but that some models are useful,” I’m very excited about this computer modeliing initiative. I’m thinking Theories 2.0 !!!
