Intrinsic Uncertainty in the Study of Complex Systems: The Case of Choice of Academic Career

Maria Santa Ferretti and Eliano Pessa
Additional contact information
Maria Santa Ferretti: University of Pavia
Eliano Pessa: University of Pavia

A chapter in Systemics of Emergence: Research and Development, 2006, pp 417-426 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Usually the uncertainties associated to modeling complex systems arise from the impossibility of adopting a single model to describe the whole set of possible behaviours of a given system. It is, on the contrary, taken as granted that, once chosen a particular model (and whence renouncing to a complete knowledge about the system itself), every uncertainty should disappear. In this paper we will show, by resorting to an example related to the choice of academic career and to a structural equations modeling, that, even in this case, there is a further intrinsic uncertainty associated to the fact that algorithms used to make previsions give different answers as a function of adopted software, of the algorithm details, and of the degree of precision required. Such a further uncertainty prevents, in principle, from any attempt to reach a complete elimination of uncertainty within the study of complex systems.

Keywords: structural equation models; intrinsic uncertainty; choice of academic career; decision making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-0-387-28898-7_29

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9780387288987

DOI: 10.1007/0-387-28898-8_29

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().