NUMBERS (Law of Great)
Charles François (2004). NUMBERS (Law of Great), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(2): 2322.
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2322 ▶ |
| Object type | Methodology or model |
H. SIMON has stressed the importance of the Law of Great numbers as an aggregation tool, or variety reductor. He gives statistical mechanics as an example of this simplifying potential. By its use “it transforms the enormous complexity of a mechanical microsystem into the relative simplicity of macroscopic thermodynamic regularities.
- “Through stochastic processes, we simplify the description of a dynamic system's history by ignoring temporal trajectories of its various elements and by considering solely their distribution among the states of the system and the transference probababilities from one state to another. Another important simplification is obtained by considering only the equilibrium states of such systems, which can be frequently calculated without taking in account the trajectories used to reach these states” (1990, p.140).