Assignment #1: Feedback and Circular Causality

PAD 624, Assignment #1
Page 1
Assignment #1: Feedback and Circular Causality
(1)
Recall the graph and loop diagram of U.S. residential per capital energy use (from
USA Today, 3/23/09, "Consumers Can Sabotage Energy Conservation").
The map of feedback loops asserted there was one balancing loop and three reinforcing
loops.
(a) Assign polarities (+ and – signs) to all the links in the figure below.
(b) Then verify that the four loops are labeled correctly, one balancing loop and three
reinforcing loops.
(c) Pick one of the loops and tell the story the loop tells. Start wherever you think the
story communicates best (or is easiest for you). It makes the most sense to tell the story
with Per Capita Residential Energy Use increasing (as in the data), but your loop should
also tell a sensible story if it were to decrease.
Page 2
(2) Feedback loops in highway construction and traffic density.

(a) Highway construction loop
· Assign polarities to all the links.

· Identify the polarity of the feedback loop.
· Tell the story this loop tells.
Average
Pressure for more and commuting
wider high speed roads Average distance
commuting time
Highway Tolerable
construction commuting time
Average
Lane-miles of high commuting speed
speed roads

(b) Migration loops (these assume that city workers would rather live out in the
country than in the city if they could get to their city jobs quickly)
· Assign polarities to all the links.

· Identify the polarity of the two feedback loops.
· Tell the story each loop tells by itself.
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Average
commuting Population in
Average distance outlying areas
commuting time
Net migration to
Attractiveness outlying areas
Average of outlying areas
commuting speed
Number of
commuters

(c) Now tell the story that all these loops together tell (see composite figure next
page).
Average
Pressure for more and commuting Population in
wider high speed roads Average distance outlying areas
commuting time
Highway Tolerable
Net migration to
construction commuting time
Attractiveness outlying areas
Average of outlying areas
Lane-miles of high commuting speed
speed roads Number of
commuters
(3)
A view of some feedback loops underlying the dynamics of terrorism and opposing
efforts to suppress terrorist actions.
· Draw separately three feedback loops passing through "Efforts to suppress
terrorists." (There are actually six; just pick three you want to talk about.)
· What are the polarities of your three loops?
· What stories do those loops tell?
Page 4
Page 5
(4)
A view of stocks and flows and feedback loops for gasoline in gas stations and
vehicles in a gasoline shortage. There are three feedback loops passing through Purchase
Rate and Gas in Stations (the solid lines).
· What are the polarities of these three loops? [Remember that the Purchase Rate
subtracts from Gas in Stations, so there is a negative link implicit in the outflow
pipe.]
· Describe the role of each of these three loops when gas is perceived to be in
short supply.
· What is the effect of the two bold loops in a gasoline crisis?
(5)
In Robert King Merton's famous article "The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy" (1948), the
author describes dramatic feedback tendencies underlying the dynamics of prejudice.

...when the gentleman from Mississippi (a state which spends five times as much on
the average white pupil as on the average Negro pupil) proclaims the essential
inferiority of the Negro by pointing to the per capita ratio of physicians among
Negroes as less than one-fourth that of whites, we are impressed more by his
scrambled logic than by his profound prejudices.
Invent a feedback loop diagram that captures the thinking in this excerpt. What kind of
loop(s) do you expect to find?
[Suggestion: Include in your diagram spending per black pupil, educational

achievements of black students, number of black physicians, per capita ratio of
physicians among blacks, per capita ratio of physicians among whites, and perception of
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"the inferiority of the Negro." Include if you like the some of the same variables for the
white population.]
(6) In each of the following groups, identify a stock (an accumulation) and one or more
related flows into or out of the stock. In each group assume there is just one important
stock. Draw a stock-and-flow diagram.

Some of the words represent concepts that are neither stocks nor flows -- they are
just information in the system. Show in a diagram like the one in question (4) how you
think those other concepts in the group are related to the stock-and-flow sets you identify.
[Suggestion: don't add any more concepts to these lists. Just deal with what's there in
each one.]
(a)
Highways, highway construction, traffic density
(b)
Births, deaths, population, fecundity, life span
(c)

Knowledge, learning, forgetting, intelligence
(d)

Deficit, debt, income, spending, interest payments on debt, payments on debt
principle

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PAD 624, Assignment #1

Assignment #1: Feedback and Circular Causality

(2) Feedback loops in highway construction and traffic density.

· Assign polarities to all the links.

· Assign polarities to all the links.

[Suggestion: Include in your diagram spending per black pupil, educational

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