Jay Wright Forrester

1918–2016 · American operations researcher

Topics: complexity, simplicity, learning

• No plea about inadequacy of our understanding of the decision-making processes can excuse us from estimating decision making criteria. To omit a decision point is to deny its presence – a mistake of far greater magnitude than any errors in our best estimate of the process.

  — Jay Wright Forrester

• Formulating a model of a system should start from the question “Where is the boundary, that encompasses the smallest number of components, within which the dynamic behavior under study is generated?

  — Jay Wright Forrester

• In concept a feedback system is a closed system. Its dynamic behavior arises within its internal structure. Any action which is essential to the behavior of the mode being investigated must be included inside the system boundary.

  — Jay Wright Forrester