Wenstop, Fred, "How Can One Explicitly Represent the Fuzzy Nature of Social Causal Relations in Formal Models? Fuzzy Set Simulation Models, 1976
This paper introduces and discusses the concept of verbally formulated simulation models. Such models can operate with linguistic values as ‘high’, ‘rather high’, ‘low’ and ‘not low’, etc. as inputs. The output will be similarly verbally formulated. The stimulation procedure is based on a fuzzy set-theoretical semantical model of a fragment of English language, which converts verbal expressions into numerical quantities. The paper applies one particular semantical model in a simulation example. Verbal models may be more believable, or significant, than conventional system dynamic models, in that they adequately represent the fuzzy knowledge of the system which is modeled. The cost of this significance is loss of precision in model output. Verbal models are also easier to test for sensitivity to parameter-, state- and input values than traditional models. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of the model’s behavior patterns is more readily obtained. The realm of successful applications of verbal models seems, however, to be restricted to systems with variables which are not physically measurable, but whose values are only available through human intuition. Finally, verbal models may successfully be incorporated in conventional system dynamic models if technically feasible. Such a prosedure would allow for an adequate handling of non-quantifiable data.
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