A Microworld for Weight and Energy Regulation

Abstract

Prior to the development of modern computers, formal modeling of real-life systems was limited to pencil-and-paper mathematical formulations. This imposed certain limitations. For example, it was often necessary to make simplifying—even heroic—assumptions when dealing with complex phenomena (such as to assume that relations between system variables are well-behaving linear, straight-line relations). To render our models mathematically tractable, we often needed to break large systems into manageable “analytical bites” and analyze the simplified fragments in isolation, “with the hope that we [could] then re-assemble these chunks of partial knowledge into an understanding of the overall system.”⁴⁹