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The document provides common mistakes made by students in system dynamics models and how to address them. It lists insufficient documentation, missing polarities, unlabeled feedback loops, and unrealistic parameter values as common errors. It also provides tips on properly documenting equation listings, debugging unit check errors, addressing floating point errors, and defining initial populations to avoid maximum value issues. Troubleshooting questions like how large an epidemic is now and why final infected values exceed expected maximums are also addressed.

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Anderson F Miranda Silva
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108 views

Recitation#2 PDF

The document provides common mistakes made by students in system dynamics models and how to address them. It lists insufficient documentation, missing polarities, unlabeled feedback loops, and unrealistic parameter values as common errors. It also provides tips on properly documenting equation listings, debugging unit check errors, addressing floating point errors, and defining initial populations to avoid maximum value issues. Troubleshooting questions like how large an epidemic is now and why final infected values exceed expected maximums are also addressed.

Uploaded by

Anderson F Miranda Silva
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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15.

871 Syystem Dyynamics
 
Recitation#2

1
Most Popular Mistakes done by SD
 
stud
dents

• Students most often do the followingg mistakes:

– Insufficient documentation: Listing of model 
equations ***** (not required for this assignment)
– Missing polarities
polarities***
– Label/name feedback loops***
– Handing in a very long HW, but not addressing some 
parts of the question**, hoping the TA will forget 
about it ;)
• e.g. “How large is the epidemic now?” 
• Brevity is a virtue in HW submission
– Using very unrealistic values for parameters* 
• e.g. probabilities are usually defined btw (0.0
(0.0‐1.0)
1.0)

2
How to document “equation
equation listing

listing”

Left hand side of Vensim main screen, click on “DOCUMENT ALL” to copy all Vensim
Equations for your model

3
Most Pop
pular Questions:  I can’t op
pen the SARS DATA
 

4
Debugging Units Check Errors
‐ Default Model Settings    ‐ Correct Model Settings
Settings

5
Debugging Units Check Errors

6
Floating Point Error

• It may be a couple of things. You may have unrealistic values for some of 
the parameters,
parameters  e.g.
e g  infectivity.
infectivity  Check your time step,
step  dt ,of
of the
the
 
simulation. Make sure value of probabilities are defined btw 0‐1.
 
– E.g. setting “infectivity” to a start value of 20 (by assuming 20%), instead of 0.2 

7
Population infected max value

• Q‐ We noticed that when we increase the initial value of 
“Population infected with SARS”, its final value after 
simulation is 350 plus the initial value.
– Thi
This appears to be incorrectt bbecause th
the final
fi l vallue sh
hould
ld 
be 350.

• A‐ If the initial value is a small number (e.g. 1‐10) it may not 
be seen as a big problem. However one way to solve it is to 
d fi  an auxiliary
define ili  variable
i bl  as the
h  initial
i i i l value
l  for
f  the
h  Infected
I f d 
population, e.g. “init infected”, and to reinitialize the Total 
population to (=350‐”init infected”)

8
A simp
ple model that capptures the dyynamics
 
of an infectious disease‐ SARS
  

Historical data: SARSDATA.vdf 

‐the
the incidence (rate at which new cases were 
reported, measured in people/day)

‐ cumulative prevalence (cumulative number 
of cases reported, measured in people) for 
SARS in Taiwan 

9
MIT OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu

15.871 Introduction to System Dynamics


Fall 2013

For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: http://ocw.mit.edu/terms.

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