Subject: Stocks and Flows

Posted by Bill Barroway on 3/3/2004
In Reply To:Stocks and Flows Posted by Bill Ellis on 3/3/2004

Message:

It really helps to think of stocks and flows by using the prefixes "the amount of" or "the number of", or "the rate of change of", or "how much". Take for example "the amount of money in a savings account" and "the interest rate", which is "the rate of change of" the amount of money in a savings account".

Stocks and flows are about counted and measured things. To use stocks and flows one must think about quantitative things, things that can be assigned numbers. This is because the underlying structure of stocks and flows is the calculus of systems. Under the hood is some pretty nifty mathematics.

Critical thinking is difficult to label as a stock or a flow in part because we have not widely agreed upon a good way to measure or count it. Many folks seem to be interested in assessing the quality of critical thinking and while it is a bit of a stretch to assign a numerical score to the quality of critical thinking, I suppose one could do it.

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