All models are wrong: reflections on becoming a systems scientist†

By John D. Sterman. 2002

1,033 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Computational Theory and Mathematics, Management Science and Operations Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/74abb5c917e1620508fca737d3471d1f294b9bb8

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Citations in the corpus

Why don't well-educated adults understand accumulation? A challenge to researchers, educators, and citizens (2009, background): “Many participants appear to assume that the stock should match the inflow or the outflow, leading them to make erroneous inferences about the stock (see Sterman, 2002, for a discussion).”
Preparing Sustainability-Literate Teachers (2009, neutral): “Systems dynamics is based on Forrester’s work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Forrester, 1968; Sterman, 2002) and considers interactive feedback and feed forward loops, and underlying causes and forces that result in change or equilibrium.”
Assessment of the adequacy of mathematical models (2006, background): “Model testing is often designed to demonstrate the rightness of a model and the tests are typically presented as evidences to promote its acceptance and usability (Sterman, 2002).”
A Financial Macro-Network Approach to Climate Policy Evaluation (2018, positive): “Here we extend the concept and the application of feedback loops (Sterman, 2000, 2002) to the context of the macro-network of financial interdependencies.”
New Product Development as a Complex Adaptive System of Decisions (2006, background): “The potential outcome from this nonlinearity is a chaotic dynamic similar to that identified by Flake (1999) and Sterman (2002) in their system dynamic models.”
Usage impact on data center electricity needs: A system dynamic forecasting model (2021, background): “…thinking machines for answering “ what if ” questions about possible futures that are hard to create and experiment with in a non-virtual way [21,22] and aim at representing the nonlinear behavior of complex systems over time using variables that influence the flows (i.e., the volume changes)…”
Learning from evidence in a complex world. (2006, background): “Systems thinking requires us to examine issues from multiple perspectives, to expand the boundaries of our mental models, to consider the long-term consequences of our actions, including their environmental, cultural, and moral implications.(58,59)”
The Use of System Dynamics Simulation in Water Resources Management (2009, background): “Hence, the concept of validity is flawed and models are never valid (Oreskes et al. 1994; Sterman 2002).”