Ok, I'll try another approach. I looked into EpiSims a little. It really does seem like a fully formed modeling environment for how we think epidemics propagate. It's missing the scientific reality component though, the step of identifying how what we think is *different from* reality. That comparison is just not there that I could see. One of the obvious problems is that the old method of classical mechanics does not work at all for complex systems. This kind of modeling simply does not describe reality as following mathematical curves anymore, so recording the shapes of nature's curves and adjusting formulas to fit them no longer helps to validate our best models. Still, don't you need some sort of method of a) validation of results and b) finding patterns in the discrepancy in the results found?
Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/> -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 11:54 AM To: Phil Henshaw; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] One of my projects Well, ok. 1. I have no idea what an "active management point of view" means. 2. An epidemic is not an agent. The epidemic is the emergent behavior of the system in response to a pathogen being introduced into the population of agents (people, it this case) in the system being simulated. 3. I have no idea what "exploiting the passive resource of infection pathways" means. Phil, I strongly recommend that before you invest much more time asking questions about agent based models and their use that you actually build one yourself. And then run it. Until then, I suspect your ability understand the basic underlying principles of ABM technology will be somewhat limited. -- Doug Roberts, RTI International [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] 505-455-7333 - Office 505-670-8195 - Cell On 4/2/07, Phil Henshaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Not sure what happened to my last post to try to clarify the question, but another thought occurred to me this AM Maybe a way to look at an epidemic from the active management point of view, and an epidemic as an autonomous agent itself, is to consider it as exploiting the passive resource of infection pathways in a community. Any particular epidemic may be using the familiar ones, or some unfamiliar ones. It may discover new ones in the course of events. The question is how to use models to help people a) identify the interruptible links in the pathways an epidemic is exploiting?, and b) how to tell when the epidemic has changed to exploit some new unseen pathway that a new intervention strategy will be needed for? -- Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] explorations: www.synapse9.com Re: [FRIAM] One of my projects Douglas Roberts Sat, 31 Mar 2007 09:05:26 -0800 Phil, I did read your question, repeated below: Cool, do you include any comparative natural system component? Perhaps working with better ways to identify system structures in natural systems and early signs of when they are inventing new ones would be helpful in developing tests for models that approximate the complexity of nature. However, I found it to be sufficiently ambiguous that I had absolutely no idea what was being asked, and thus found myself at a complete loss for a response. -- Doug Roberts, RTI International [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] 505-455-7333 - Office 505-670-8195 - Cell ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
