FIT2001 Week1&2 Understanding the nature of system analysis

As the title indicated, the goal of the first two weeks' exercise is to help student understanding the nature of system analysis. During the lecture, I have studied system analysis theoratically. The more theoratical, the more difficult to understand the nature of system analysis. However,if students can combine the theory with real world, we probably can have a better understanding. I think that's why the exercise of the tutorial is requiring students to analysis water supply system and food system. students were split into several groups and each group discuss about the two systems.

Everyone is familiar with the water supply system and the food system because they have significant impact on our daily life. But the question still remains: Do we really understand the water supply system and food system? First of all, what we have seen everyday is small part of the systems, a large amount of elements are functioning and interactiong behind our sight. In additional, the quality of our life has improved dramatically during the last a few decades. People are more concerned about the higher level activities rather then the basic activities. I have clicked the web link on the tutorial notes and I found an very interesting story. A mum asked her son, "where does milk come from?" The boy responded loudly, "From supermarkets!" This story is an extreme example to point out people's ignorance of basic systems. Furthermore, although water system and food system seem to be simple at first galance, they are becoming more and more complex along with the development of our society.

When I discussed with my gruop members, I noticed that we were leraning the water and food system in the same way like blind people learning an elephant. Everyone of us had different view of the systems and we were trying to construct the systems in our mind by combining everyone's view together. We also did lots of research on websites. However, it was absolutely a mass, we finally got lost in the systems. I think it is mainly because we were studying complex systems in an arbitary way, we were strongly depending on our instinct. We do need an effective and efficient approach to study system analysis.

As communication skill is vital for system analysists, our homework was to perpare an presentation for water supply and food system. My job was to perpare a presentation for food system in the view point of standard authorities. In order to conquer the difficulties I mentioned previously, I decided to study the food system succintly. People may ask me how can you understan a complex system succinctly? Well, my answer is we are not trying to build a real food system. I am a beginner, I can identitfy the key elements of food system and describe these key elements in detail. I compared a food standard authority in a small town with the food authority in China. I quickly identified setting standards and executing standards are the key elements for any food autority. Then, I could foucus my mind on these two single elements. During the presentation, I still kept the principle of succinctness. For instince, when I was talking about setting standards for farmers, I didn't tell everyone a food authority should make blah.....blah...blah... standards for farmers. It is very boring and inefficient! Alternatively, I told them a story :I always buy some lunchbox size apples in supermarkets and I found that the quality of the apples varies a great deal in different markets. " What is the implication?" I encouraged everyone to think. Then I told everyone it mainly because farms fertilized and irritated the same kind of apples in different ways. In order to ensure that the food in the market is of satisfactory quality, food authority has to make standards for fertilization, irritation, solid and so on.

I want to stop writing in here. I don't want to make it a long article. The last thing I would like to say is what I am going to write next week. When I finish reading the first few chapters of the textbook, I am going to write a summary or argument to refine my thinking. Because Newton's story taught me when I read giant's book, I must try to stand on their shoulder so that I can look further than the giant!