On the Value of a Taxonomy in Modeling

Abstract

Though modern science and business have created and adopted classification schemes, taxonomies, and operating rules that can be applied almost universally, the practice of building models and simulations remains unbounded by science. Like the arts, each practitioner has the freedom to create a model in any form that appears to offer a solution to a specific problem. A Periodic Table of modeling has not emerged. Practitioners do not rely on a framework of established, tested, and accepted modeling techniques to guide their work. Conversely, there are also no known poor methods for structuring a model which are not acceptable and which would bring censure from the professional community.

The unbounded nature of the current practice of modeling is supportive of an artistic approach to modeling that encourages creative freedom in imagining and building a unique new model. The environment is also convenient to modeling as a service in which a customer is allowed to direct the construction of a model in almost any direction that will address the problem, with few restrictions applied from known best practices. As expedient as these advantages are, they also allow inaccurate and inefficient approaches to be used without an objective or historic “model-of-modeling” as a reference. The current practice of modeling allows almost any approach while its measure of correctness is determined solely by the usefulness of the resulting product. This chapter is an attempt to begin the construction of a model-of-modeling which can serve as the Periodic Table for our profession.