Prospects and Problems For a General Modeling Methodology

Malcolm Davis, Stanley J. Rosenschein, Norman Shapiro

Published 1982

Computer technology has yet to provide the modeling enterprise with adequate tools, with the results that modeling has become confused with simulation; modelers are artificially constrained to state-transition models; modelers cannot adequately deal with complex models; modelers often obtain numbers but not insight; and quantitative and qualitative models cannot be gracefully combined. Research that might alleviate these problems is discussed in this Note. A language must be developed that can smoothly express quantitative and qualitative notions in the context of a stand-alone model. The authors describe one small step in this direction: They model a little girl bouncing a ball, which involves both physical constraints and human decisionmaking, in a tightly intertwined manner. They also developed an illustrative language for expressing the model. This exercise demonstrated the importance of a stand-alone model and of the ability to smoothly combine qualitative and quantitative model elements. The need for improvement in automatic deduction is also discussed.

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Davis, Malcolm, Stanley J. Rosenschein, and Norman Shapiro, Prospects and Problems For a General Modeling Methodology. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1982. https://www.rand.org/pubs/notes/N1801.html.
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