From [ Marc Abrams (980823.2045) ]
[From Chris Cherpas (980823.1500 PT)]
Thanks for blazing ahead on a PCT/Vensim tool-kit.
With more examples, more pedagogical problems should
show up. Who knows? CSG might start looking more
like a volunteer army, and less like a chat room.
I'm with you
I personally enjoy flying to the highest peaks of
meta-speculation without doing any actual work, like
fantasizing about the (PCT) psychology of modeling,
without actually participating in a sustained process
of modeling myself, where the real problems show up.
Imagined outcomes are so easy for the same reason
we rarely learn much by idly entertaining them.
I'm with you here to. I guess "mathematically challenged"
would be a good discription of my math skills :-). But what
is scary is that I have _no_ problem working through the
logic and understanding a model. Even the, Ugh !,
mathematical parts. I actually understood Bills explanation
about the partial use of a signal. It amazed the shit out of
me ( that I understood it 
)
As if to prove the point, I would guess that the most
difficult and interesting problems of developing PCT/CSG
groupware will have less to do with great ideas about this
feature or that feature, and more to do with paying
attention to methodology over long, uninterrupted
stretches of generating, questioning, and incrementally
improving a substantial volume of models.
I couldn't agree more.
Marc