Najee Quashie, Grace Peluso, Kyle Copeland

   The "Systems Perspective:"  Thinking in Systems

   Your project paper on the basic ideas of "the systems perspective" is 
   reasonably good, but I think your oral presentation was stronger.  The
   hardcopy version I'm attaching did not print out correctly for some 
   reason.  I do see that you have several pages beyond what printed out
   and you do have the required reference section.  So no penalty is being
   assessed for that.  However, the references section is not 
   integrated for the whole paper.  It looks as though different co-authors
   listed their sources separately and then you just pasted the reference
   lists together.   Moreover, the paper does not have an effective overall 
   conclusion.  It just sort of "peters out" without tying together the points 
   you have made.  I know it can be hard to manage things like this when you are 
   "writing by committee." But making sure you are communicating and coordinating 
   your efforts is an important part of working in a team.   Plus, the paper as 
   a whole could really have used a more focused summation at the end.  

   Your use of sources, citations, etc. are mostly correct.  But see 
   comment 2 below

   The writing (in the first section especially) is a bit rough.  See comments
   written on the hardcopy.

   Specific comments:

   1)  There is no need to (and usually you should not) include your working outline 
       in the version of the paper that is submitted.  

   2)  The reference to (University of Florida) does not seem to match anything
       in the list of references.  Which sorce does it refer to?  And why are
       you listing that source that way and using footnotes for others?  Be
       consistent!

   3)  The discussion of the discrepancies in the room temperature system is
       not exactly right.  The discrepancy between the desired room temperature and
       the actual room temperature would be measured by the thermostat in the 
       room.  That thermostat would compute the difference between those temperatures
       and open the "heat from furnace" valve to let heat in when the difference
       was sufficiently large.  Somewhat differently, the discrepancy between
       the actual room temperature and the outside temperature would drive the 
       process of diffusion of heat from the interior to the exterior.  Here, there's
       no human-created device except the windows involved.  It's the physics
       of heat transfer that controls the "heat to outside" valve.  These are 
       both balancing feedback loops because they both try to drive the room 
       temperature toward some value (or range).  The thermostat tries to drive
       the room temperature toward the desired temperature, while the windows
       try to drive the room temperature toward the outside temperature.  

    4) I think one could try to analyze the food web (or chain) in Fig. 2 according 
       to systems principles.  But you should realize that this is quite a bit 
       more complicated than the room temperature system and the description
       you have doesn't really make full use of the systems perspective. For one thing, 
       you have something like six different stocks rather than just one.  Moreover, 
       the arrows indicate flows between the stocks, but it's not clear whether these 
       are feedback loops or not.  (Does the stock of nutrients in the phytoplankton stock
       affect the flows in and out of that stock?  If so, how?) It is also not clear whether 
       these arrows are balancing or whether they are reinforcing.  In other words, 
       this is an interesting real world system, but it might be very complicated
       to understand it fully from the perspective described in Meadows' book.

    5) The same comment applies to the blood glucose system, although that
       is simple enough that you could give an almost complete analysis.  It
       seems like the production of insulin in the pancreas is part of a balancing
       feedback loop designed to maintain blood glucose levels within a particular
       range.  There's a second feedback loop involved here that would control
       the input of glucose by way of the eating arrow.  It looks as though this
       system ends up being quite similar to the room temperature example.  That's
       not a criticism -- it's a good example, but it would also have been good
       to point out that similarity.

    Grade:  88 (B+)