This is a simple model that demonstrates the Vensim RANDOM POISSON function, with comparison to the theoretical density function.
Category: Toy Model
Oscillation from a purely positive loop
Replicated by Mohammad Mojtahedzadeh from Alan Graham’s thesis, or created anew with the same inspiration. He created these models in the course of his thesis work on structural analysis through pathway participation matrices.
These models are pure positive feedback loops that don’t exhibit exponential growth (under the right initial conditions). See my blog post for a discussion of the details.
These are generic models, and therefore don’t have units. All should run with Vensim PLE, except the generic gain matrix version which uses arrays and therefore requires an advanced version or the Model Reader.
The original 4th order model, replicated from Alan’s thesis: PurePosOscill4.vpm – note that this includes a .cin file with an alternate stable initialization.
My slightly modified version, permitting initialization with different gains at each level: PurePosOscill4alt.vpm
Loops of different orders: 3.vpm 6.vpm 8.vpm 12.vpm (I haven’t spent much time with these. It appears that the high-order versions transition to growth rather quickly – my guess is that this is an artifact of numerical precision, i.e. any tiny imprecision in the initialization introduces a bit of the growth eigenvector, which quickly swamps the oscillatory signal. It would be interesting to try these in double precision Vensim to see if I’m right.)
Stable initializations: 2stab.vpm 12stab.vpm
A generic version, representing a system as a generic gain matrix, so you can use it to explore any linear unforced variant: Generic.vpm
Rental car stochastic dynamics
This is a little experimental model that I developed to investigate stochastic allocation of rental cars, in response to a Vensim forum question.
There’s a single fleet of rental cars distributed around 50 cities, connected by a random distance matrix (probably not physically realizable on a 2D manifold, but good enough for test purposes). In each city, customers arrive at random, rent a car if available, and return it locally or in another city. Along the way, the dawdle a bit, so returns are essentially a 2nd order delay of rentals: a combination of transit time and idle time.
The two interesting features here are:
- Proper use of Poisson arrivals within each time step, so that car flows are dimensionally consistent and preserve the integer constraint (no fractional cars)
- Use of Vensim’s ALLOC_P/MARKETP functions to constrain rentals when car availability is low. The usual approach, setting actual = MIN(desired, available/TIME STEP), doesn’t work because available is subscripted by 50 cities, while desired has 50 x 50 origin-destination pairs. Therefore the constrained allocation could result in fractional cars. The alternative approach is to set up a randomized first-come, first-served queue, so that any shortfall preserves the integer constraint.
The interesting experiment with this model is to lower the fleet until it becomes a constraint (at around 10,000 cars).
Documentation is sparse, but units balance.
Requires an advanced Vensim version (for arrays) or the free Model Reader.
Update, with improved distribution choice and smaller array dimensions for convenience: