Talk:System

message: Devlin 25th november 2008: Article was vandalized, I repaired as much as possible. Admin: Please feel free to refert it back to its original state.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.215.32.139 (talk) 21:26, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Repairs 

message: "A system can be broadly defined as an integrated set of elements that accomplish a defined objective. People from  different engineering disciplines have different perspectives of what a "system" is. For 
example, software  engineers often refer to an integrated set of  computer programs  as  a "system." Electrical engineers might refer to complex integrated circuits or an integrated set of electrical units as 
a "system." As can be seen, "system" depends on one’s perspective, and the “integrated set of elements that accomplish a defined objective” is an appropriate definition."
:Source: INCOSE (2000) Systems Engineering Handbook 
:Context: Systems Engineering
:Credibility: INCOSE is an international organisation of people working in the are of systems engineering
"Attempts to define "system" usually end up encompassing just about everything in the universe. The problem is that the univese itself is a system, so is an atom and so are most things in between. In the most general sense, a system is simply any organized set of components that work together in some defined way."
"Most industries use models for purposes such as studying requirements for systems, examining feasibility and manufacturabilitym, and determining how to build an actual system. In the computer industry, models ar used for some parts of the development process (usually for software requirements or design, but no techniques are widely used for modeling the entire system"
"On the other hand, abstract models are just representations, omitting some aspects of real-world systems, at least temporarily, but mapping what we hope to understand into a form that we can understand. Different types of models answer different types of questions about the system they represent, but even if we build a hundred different models, they could not answer every possible question about the system. That can only be done by the final system itself."
:Source: Process for Systems Architecting and Requirements Engineering; Derek Hately, Peter Hruschka, Imtiaz Pirbhai. Dorset House Publising (2000) 
:Context: Systems Architecting
:Credibility: System engineers and systems architects have build their discipline over the past 30 years based on amongst others the works of Hatley and Pirbhai.
""Systems" mean different things to different people. For our purposes here, the definition of "system" has two parts: 1) a system is a complex set of dissimilar elements or parts so connected or related as to form an organic whole 2) the whole is greater in some sens than the sum of the parts, that is, the system has properties beyond those of the parts. Indeed, the purpose of building systems is to gain those properties."
"Architecting usually begins with generating an abstract mental or paper description - a model - of the system and it's environment. There will be many steps and perhaps many years between this abstraction and the final evaluation. And well before that evaluation is complete, the system will encounter the "real world". [...snip...]. To complicate the architect's problems, the world in which the system will have to exist will probably change while the system is being built."
:Source: Systems Architecting, Creating & Building Complex Systems, Eberhardt Rechtin. Prentice Hall (2000) 
:Context: Systems Architecting
:Credibility: Eberhardt Rechtin was a recognised expert in the are of systems engineering 
"A cloud masses, the sky darkens, leaves twist upward, and we know that it will rain. We also know storm runoff will feed into groundwater miles away, and the sky will clear by tomorrow. All these events are distant in time and space, and yet they are all connected within the same pattern. Each has an influence on the rest, an influence that is usually hidden from view. You can only understand the system of a rainstorm by contemplating the whole, not any individual part of the pattern. Business and other human endeavors are also systems. They, too, are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other. [...snip...] Systems thinking is a conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools that has been developed over the past 50 years, to make full patterns clearer, and to help us see how to change them effectively."
"That is why the discipline of managing mental models - surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works - promises t be a major breakthrough for building learning organizations."
:Source: The Fifth Disipline (Revised edition), Peter Senge, Currency Double Day (2006), ISBN 038551725
:Context: Systems thinking
:Credibility: Peter Senge is a recognized authority in the area of organizational learning and systems thinking
"A system comprised of a (usually large) number of (usually strongly) interacting entities, processes, or agents, the understanding of which requires the development, or the use of, new scientific tools, nonlinear models, out-of equilibrium descriptions and computer simulations." [Advances in Complex Systems Journal]" (1)
"The Complex Systems Modeling Research Area is concerned with basic and applied research on simulations of complex systems and development of applications to understand and control such systems. By complex system we refer to any system featuring a large number of interacting components (agents, processes, etc.) whose aggregate activity is nonlinear (not derivable from the summations of the activity of individual components) and typically exhibits hierarchical self-organization." (2)
:Source: Luis Rocha, (1), (2)
:Context: Complex systems modeling
:Credibility: the univerisity of Indiana would not have started a scientific project based on these definitions if their was no recognised (scientific) basis for it.
""Appreciation for systems" - what does that mean? A system might be generally defined as a collection of interrelated, interdependent components or processes that act in concert to turn inputs into some kind of outputs in pursuit of some goal. Systems influence, and are influenced by, their external environment. Obviously, quality (or the lack of it) doesn't exist in a vacuum. It can only be considered in the context of the system in which it resides. So, to follow Deming's [AH: this is part of a text about W. Edwards Deming] it's not possible to improve quality without a thorough understanding of how that system works."
:Source: Goldratt's Theory of Constraints, H. William Dettmer, ASQ/Quality Press (1997) 
:Credibility: Dettmer is a recoginised author and quotes Deming, who in turn is recognised for his system of profound knowledge, which is based on considering the manufacturing process and everything related to it as a system. 
Angeloh (talk) 18:07, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  collected quotes, starting point 

message: * In this edit text is here copy/pasted from the systems theory article. 
-- Mdd (talk) 23:10, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copy-paste registration 

message: The intro is good, bordering to very good. It is what I would like to read, but I already had an idea of what a system is.  <mood class="humbleness">Maybe however,</mood> the intro could profit from a few examples of what has been analysed as systems to serve the needs of less knowledgeable persons. F.ex. a computer system, the human nervous system as a biofeedback system, a chemical factory as a system. Just something short, so that the reader gets an idea what application areas are common. ... said: Rursus (mbork³) 09:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair idea Angeloh (talk) 10:21, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. This article does have a section "type of systems" which gives just a start, and the systems/systems science template at the bottum lists some more main types of systems. I even created a List of systems with 2000+ systems mentioned in Wikipedia. If you want to explain some more about the most common systems I would start with the systems listed in the template. -- Mdd (talk) 00:00, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: A wish

message: Why should there be a need to define this? A system is a collection of elements conneceted together so that they nmay interact. There is no system without the connections which themselves specify the extent of the system. Hence no need for boundaries.
Kenneth Boulting was not very clear when he wrote:
             A system is a big black box
             Of which we can't unlock the locks
             And all we can find out about
             Is what goes in and what comes out.
             Perceiving input-output pairs,
             Related by parameters,
             Permits us, sometimes, to relate
             An input, output, and a state.
             If this relation's good and stable
             Then to predict we may be able,
             But if this fails us heaven forbid!
             We'll be compelled to force the lid!
Yet it seems that this still applies!
Macrocompassion (talk) 13:49, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boundary of the System 

message: Hi, the current (Oct 31, 2012) definition of a system is given as: "A system is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole or a set of elements (often called 'components' ) and relationships which are different from relationships of the set or its elements to other elements or sets."
I've seen the following discussion on this but I have a more basic (or stupid) question - what is the property that distinguishes a composite component from a "system"? A composite component has a set of elements as well and relationships among these.
BTW, I miserably fail to understand the "relationships which are different from relationships of the set or its elements to other elements or sets." - do you mean "relationships among the elements of the set"?
In the first part of the definition, what exactly does "integrated whole" mean? Is a composite component an "integrated whole"? If not, how can one judge if something is an "integrated whole"? I find the expression a bit too vague.
Separate point: I believe that the (Greek) etymology of the word "σύστημα (systēma)" is "συν (syn)" (with, along with, together, at the same time) + "ιστημι (istēmi)" (to stand), i.e., its literal meaning is co-standing.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aalphabetic+letter%3D*i%3Aentry+group%3D32%3Aentry%3Di%28%2Fsthmi
138.40.68.42 (talk) 21:27, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition of a system (Oct 31, 2012) 

message: To be "arrow compatible":
File:System boundary2.svg|Isolated System (not need arrow)
File:OpenSystemRepresentation.svg|Open System (need arrow to represent flow)
File:System boundary.svg|old illustration (incompatible)
--Krauss (talk) 07:43, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  change lead illustration 

message: Networking service isp license Roufique Hossain 20:11, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Networking service  

message: I came to this article from reading the articles Time-invariant system, Causal system and Linear time-invariant theory. This article does not contain enough mathematics to be useful for the reader of the mentioned articles. I would like a proper mathematical definition of a system here in this article and some examples. E.g. a system is a function that maps functions (called input signals) to functions (called output signals), i.e. the domain and codomain of a system are function spaces. I propose adding a section 'System (Mathematics)' to this article. Another option would be to create a new article 'System (Mathematics)'. This would have the advantage that we could treat important system properties like linearity, stability, ... there. Fvultier (talk) 16:16, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  System (Mathematics) 

message: Perhaps Productivity systems can be part of some other page. --Ancheta Wis    (talk  | contribs) 00:46, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Productivity systems