computer since /complex System

Question

hi there,

How does parsimony come into picture when dealing with modelling ? The idea that less is more and the difficulty in modelling a complex system are conflicting nature. How does one incorporate parsimony in modelling complex systems?

Answer 1

When you're modelling some complex system, the goal is to break the system down into simplified and well defined parts. Then you can use those sub models to build up to the bigger model. In this case using parsimony would mean breaking the model down into as few parts as possible while maintaining accurate predictions from the whole.

I wouldn't say the nature of complex systems and parsimony are contradictory. Complexity isn't a boolean value. So parsimony is used to scale the complexity of a system down as much as possible.

I think SpaceX is a great example of this. Breaking out of the earth's atmosphere is extremely difficult and requires large amounts of complexity. But Elon is always talking about simplifying the manufacturing and design of their rockets.