SV: Terez on Sloganeering

[Øgland - Petter <petter.ogland@skatteetaten.no>]

What is the operational definition of a system?  Good question.  In Lars
Skyttner's "General Systems Theory: An Introduction" (Macmillan: London,
1993) there are several alternative definitions, none of them particularily
convincing as far as I can see.

Perhaps the best way is to view a system as a (non-finite) Finite State
Machine; M = (S, I, O, u, v) where S is the set of states, I the input
alphabet, O the output alphabet, u the next state function, and v the output
function.

When Deming uses the word "system", I get the impression he is using the
word in a similar fashion as Ackoff, i.e. as the state space to be used for
solving some kind of optimisation problem.

Petter