Stella is installed on both the Macintosh and the Windows computers at SLIC. Stella and IThink are also installed on the computers in the graduate student offices/computer lab on the 2nd floor of Troy Hall. (Stella and Ithink are the same software; the names are different to target different markets.) You can purchase Stella from isee systems, formerly High Performance Systems, Inc. As of December 2004, the student price was $120. (You will not need the "research version" for this course.) You might also call the WSU Bookstore, where a discount may be available. (In previous years, the book store price was around $75, and John O'Brian was the person to contact at The Bookie, 32-2537, extension 313.) |
you can see that it is based on the same "stock and flow" approach as Stella. Instruction will be mainly in Stella, but there will be plenty of opportunity to learn Vensim. There are more Stella examples in the book, so some students prefer to their routine assignments in Stella. However, I will accept routine assignments in either Vensim or Stella. You may do your class project in either Vensim or Stella. You can obtain Vensim from Ventana Systems, Inc. To get started, I recommend you download the free Personal Learning Edition, the PLE version of Vensim. We have installed the PLE Plus version of Vensim in the ESRP computer lab in Troy Hall. As of Dec 2004, PLE Plus cost $89 for academic use. I will demonstrate some advanced models from our research in class. They use Vensim DSS, the "decision support system" version. As of Dec 2004, the DSS version cost $795 for academic use. |