My response was more along the lines of, what's the point of forcing this
comparison?   If an agent in an ABM has equations that define one or more of
its rules, then (if you absolutely feel some compelling need to) you can
think of the model as a systems dynamics model.

So what?  Same response to the abstract:

*"This paper compares System Dynamics (SD) and Agent-Based Modeling (ABM).
As normally understood, ABM subsumes SD. But if SD variables and rules are
generalized sufficiently, SD  and ABM can be considered equivalent." *

What does this buy you?  Is this just an academic exersize in preparation to
writing a paper with the sole purpose of concluding that a comparison
between ABM and SD methodologies exists, or does thinking about an ABM as an
SD, or vice versa actually provide some hidden benefit to developers and
users of models?

--Doug

On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 10:02 AM, Robert Holmes <[email protected]>wrote:

> Your paper concludes that: "Any SD model can be converted to an equivalent
> agent-based model". However it begs the question: why would I carry out
> the conversion? Are ABM in some sense "better" than SD?
>
> -- Robert
>
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 6:42 AM, Russ Abbott <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> Yesterday, a friend (Franzi Poldy for those of you who know him) and I
>> were discussing the relationship between system dynamics and agent-based
>> modeling. I've written up a brief (5 pages) discussion. It's fairly rough,
>> but if anyone gets a chance to read it, I'd appreciate your comments. To
>> motivate your looking at it I'll claim that it comes to some interesting
>> conclusions.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> -- Russ
>>
>>
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>
>
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