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Development of a Model

Developing a model is perhaps the most challenging part of problem solving. In order to model a system, you first have to make some assumptions. These assumptions must find the medium between simplifying the problem so that a solution can be found relatively quickly and easily, while not over-simplifying. In addition you need to determine which asssumptions are valid, and which ones are not. Most important of all is that the model fits the data. Regardless of how much fun it is to derive and manipulate equations, a model isn't very useful if it doesn't accurately describe what we witness, and most importantly, what we expect to witness in the future.


John Hoggard <hoggard@math.vt.edu>
Last modified: Sun Aug 10 16:27:12 EDT 1997