Dynamics

Download: Dynamics (Sept 27, 2001)

                                                22 August 1999

     Program DYNAMICS generates simulation data for exploring the reach of
nonrecursive SEM models in identifying interpretively meaningful system
parameters.  More specifically, when the endogenous variables in an open
system adapt by linear dynamics to initial disequilibrium and exogenous
influences, the question to be studied is what conditions on the system and
its environment make it possible to recover the system's dynamic parameters
from analysis of its variables' synchronic covariances by a suitably
constrained SEM model.

     DYNAMICS allows you to choose structural parameters for a system
comprising four variables which influence one another by linear dynamics
with some degree of random disturbance.  It is intended that two of the four
system variables be configured as stable exogenous inputs, but the program
allows you to relax that presumption as whimsically as you wish.

     To run DYNAMICS, first copy DYNAMICS.EXE to a subdirectory that you
have created for collecting results from this.  (As a test, you can also run
it direcly off the floppy.)  Then either click on it in Windows or, if in
DOS, cd to the appropriate subdirectory and type DYNAMICS at the DOS prompt.
The documentation you see on screen should adequately apprise you of what
you need to enter and what will result from that.  (If not, please complain
to me so I can rectify the deficiency.)  If you find the output of DYMAMICS
useful but would prefer an expansion of its versatility (such as how it
randomizes and/or standardizes initial state and disturbances), please
advise me of that.

    This program's source file, DYNAMICS.FOR, is also included here in
case you have some acquaintence with Fortran or a similar programming
language and are curious about the program's design.  Note that just a
few lines suffice to execute its computations and data collections; all
the source code's heavy breathing is managing the interactive I/O.

                                 Wm. W. Rozeboom
                                 Department of Psychology
                                 University of Alberta
                                 E-mail:rozeboom@ualberta.ca


P.S. This package also includes, in OUTAUG17.TXT, some correspondence
     I had at the time of this program's creation regarding its logic.