System Measurability LO3356 and Intro -- Ben Budiman

Ben Budiman (bbens@MIT.EDU)
Sat, 21 Oct 95 23:42:51 EST

Greetings LOers,

First I would like to thank our host Mr. Rick Karash for letting me join
the gathering last September in which I met and got involved in very
interesting conversations with several people.

Currently I am a graduate student in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. I
major in Process Control and minor in Management of Socioeconomic Systems.
I was first introduced to Systems Thinking through a System Dynamics
course at MIT when Peter Senge delivered a guest lecture in the class.
That was the first time I was introduced to the learning organization
paradigm.

Growing up in the Eastern part of the world and having received higher
education in the US, I treasure the learning opportunity and experience.
I also hold a firm believe that the structure of our systems cause them to
behave in some particular yet peculiar ways. In other words, I don't
believe history repeats itself. It is the people who repeat the very same
"mistakes" that appear as if history is repeating itself. I strongly
belief that systemic thinking and learning will reveal the structure that
causes a certain behavior to show.

At the moment I am doing a special study, just _for kicks_ and credit, on
system measurability. I'm currently asking myself a question if a certain
measure of a system really represents the state of the systems as
intended. For example, many people consider themselves healthy for
absence of diseases. But absence of a particular or all diseases may not
represent the state (health) of any being on this planet. In other words
I am wondering if any of you is aware of a criterion, or something
similar, that qualifies a measure as a "true" representation of a system
of interest. This particular issue is very interesting to me because it
is analogous to the notion of observability of engineering systems. In
any system, particularly very true in engineering, the question is about
optimal locations of sensors and actuators.

I would appreciate any comments or suggestions regarding the issue. To
entice everyone to respond I promise to post the paper I'm going to write
on the matter on the mailing list.

--
Regards,
Ben Budiman
bbens@MIT.EDU

Learn as if you were never to master it; as if in fear of losing it -- Confucius