System Dynamics Tutorials

A data science reboot of MIT’s Road Maps self-study series

Acknowledgement

These tutorials derive from the Road Maps curriculum, developed by the System Dynamics in Education Project (SDEP) at MIT under the direction of Professor Jay Forrester. With the rapid growth of data science, the purpose of this series is to place the power of SD in the hands of a new generation of analysts and data scientists through supplementary tutorials and reproducible code in R. Personal thanks to Lees Stutz of the Creative Learning Exchange (CLE) for introducing me to the Road Maps curriculum and supporting my own SD journey.

Tutorials

Tutorial	Key concept
First-Order Positive Feedback	Exponential growth
Behavior of Positive Feedback Systems	Sensitivity analysis
First-Order Negative Feedback	Goal-seeking / exponential decay
Closing the Gap	Asymptotic growth and decay
S-Shaped Growth	Combined positive and negative feedback
S-Shaped Growth — SIS Epidemic	Two-stock epidemic structure; product-driven nonlinearity
Sustained Oscillation — The Pendulum	Two-stock cross-coupled structure
Damped Oscillations — The Real Pendulum	Friction as a structural factor