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Energy modelling
Book Reviews Edited
by Harry
Jones
Sources of Social Statistics, by BERNARD EDWARDS,Heinemann, London (1974), 276 pp. f4.50 (hardback) and f2.10 (softback). Mr. Edward’s book is designed primarily to be of use to workers in the field of public administration and the social services and to those studying for qualifications in the social sciences. In this sense its title is misleading and should perhaps be ‘Sources of Statistics on Social Administration’. It provides comprehensive coverage and critical commentary on the sources of population statistics, statistics relating to health, welfare and social security, housing, education and crime and justice. There may well be useful information here for public sector planners but there is unlikely to be much that will be helpful to planners in the private sector concerned with the analysis or forecasting of social trends. What is missing (and this is something urgently needed in the U.K.) is a guide to sources of statistics which tell us something about the social life of people in Britain and about changing social values. Where are the statistics on the uses of leisure time?; on attitudes to work and its rewards?; on the relative attractiveness of different careers for young people?; on changes in shopping habits? These are the kinds of social indicators likely to interest the company corporate planner. But this book is not the place to find about them. PHEIP SADLER
Ashridge Management Hertfordshire
Energy
College
Modelling, IPC Science and Technology Press, London (1974), 170 pp. f11.00 and f7.00 to subscribers of Energy Policy (softback). This special publication by the journal Energy Policy consists of the papers presented at a conference held at Queen Mary College in-October last year. The conference was organized bv the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Energy Research Unit at Queen Mary College. For several of the authors this amounted to an encore for papers presented only about one month previously at the ‘Symposium on Mathematical Models in the Energy Sector’ held in the U.S.S.R. at Alma-Ata under the auspices of the U.N. Economic Commission for Eueope. It is a very good selection of papers. On reading them-as on hearing a good many of them presented at Alma-Ataone is struck by the way models in this area (as no doubt in other broadly economic areas) fall into a number of welldefined categories. The set includes good examples of all the main types. This development along several distinct lines has been duly noted by Dr. William Vogley, Director of the Office of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of the Interior, who contributes an excellent foreword. The first main distinction is between simulation and optimization models. Simulation models answer questions of the ‘What if . . . ?’ variety and constitute a powerful aid to decision makers. Vogley does not hide his preference for these compared with optimization models, which he describes as ‘typically large, cumbersome and complex’ and liable to be dominated by minor assumptions in the model’s structure.
98
Nevertheless-as these papers bear witness-the linear programming approach to optimization modelling continues to show remarkable powers of survival. Since it first appeared we have had dynamic programming, and other non-linear optimization techniques of one sort or another, as well as the great publicity given to dynamic computer models of the Forrester type-which might be regarded as owing something to the arts of control systems engineering. These come and go but linear programming seems to go on for ever. It was, of course, given a great fillip by the development of the widespread use of computers; and when, because of the tendency of LP models to be ‘large, cumbersome and complex’ it began to make excessive demands on computer storage space and time, it was given a fresh lease of life by the development of techniques to reduce these demands. The method of improved Z substitutes described by Beglari and Laughton is specifically directed towards cutting down the demands of large LP programmes; and a paper by D. W. Dreier of ESSO Eastern Inc. is also entirely devoted to advances in the technology of large scale modelling with reference to LP models. Despite the quality of these developments one is left feeling that the LP model often remains a black box that does not readily show the user the route to the optimum that it produced, and it is easy to understand the prediliction of many decision makers for simulation models on which they can try out their own necessarily imperfect solutions which might involve barely quantifiable, perhaps because half-formed, political and social constraints. The one example of a major econometric model (by Pindyck of MIT, reporting work by himself and MacAvoy) manages to get further away than most such models from an almost ritualistic approach, namely the setting up of a loglinear equation in the hope of finding statistically different parametkrs by regression gnalysis. UGfortunately-it is quite often possible to produce a number of very different models with different input factors producing very different predictions but all having statistically significant parameters. Pindyck’s model appears to have a good deal more imagination incorporated in it than most such models but does not, it seems to me, entirely escape the general objection to this type of model. Altogether this is a stimulating set of papers from some of the best exponents of the thriving art of energy modelling. L. G. BREAKER UKAEA London
The Practice of Manpower Forecasting, edited by B. AHAMAD and M. BLAUG, Elsevier, Amsterdam (1972), 345 pp.
D.Fl.32.00 (hardback). This book is a collection of case studies-with a foreword by Sir Claus Moser, Director of the Central Statistical OfTice and Director of the Higher Education Research Unit, London School of Economics. It is a book for academics, politicians, administrators, industrialists and planners with an interest in the relationship between the education system and national skill resources to serve the economy.
LONG
RANGE
PLANNING
by Harry
Jones
Sources of Social Statistics, by BERNARD EDWARDS,Heinemann, London (1974), 276 pp. f4.50 (hardback) and f2.10 (softback). Mr. Edward’s book is designed primarily to be of use to workers in the field of public administration and the social services and to those studying for qualifications in the social sciences. In this sense its title is misleading and should perhaps be ‘Sources of Statistics on Social Administration’. It provides comprehensive coverage and critical commentary on the sources of population statistics, statistics relating to health, welfare and social security, housing, education and crime and justice. There may well be useful information here for public sector planners but there is unlikely to be much that will be helpful to planners in the private sector concerned with the analysis or forecasting of social trends. What is missing (and this is something urgently needed in the U.K.) is a guide to sources of statistics which tell us something about the social life of people in Britain and about changing social values. Where are the statistics on the uses of leisure time?; on attitudes to work and its rewards?; on the relative attractiveness of different careers for young people?; on changes in shopping habits? These are the kinds of social indicators likely to interest the company corporate planner. But this book is not the place to find about them. PHEIP SADLER
Ashridge Management Hertfordshire
Energy
College
Modelling, IPC Science and Technology Press, London (1974), 170 pp. f11.00 and f7.00 to subscribers of Energy Policy (softback). This special publication by the journal Energy Policy consists of the papers presented at a conference held at Queen Mary College in-October last year. The conference was organized bv the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Energy Research Unit at Queen Mary College. For several of the authors this amounted to an encore for papers presented only about one month previously at the ‘Symposium on Mathematical Models in the Energy Sector’ held in the U.S.S.R. at Alma-Ata under the auspices of the U.N. Economic Commission for Eueope. It is a very good selection of papers. On reading them-as on hearing a good many of them presented at Alma-Ataone is struck by the way models in this area (as no doubt in other broadly economic areas) fall into a number of welldefined categories. The set includes good examples of all the main types. This development along several distinct lines has been duly noted by Dr. William Vogley, Director of the Office of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of the Interior, who contributes an excellent foreword. The first main distinction is between simulation and optimization models. Simulation models answer questions of the ‘What if . . . ?’ variety and constitute a powerful aid to decision makers. Vogley does not hide his preference for these compared with optimization models, which he describes as ‘typically large, cumbersome and complex’ and liable to be dominated by minor assumptions in the model’s structure.
98
Nevertheless-as these papers bear witness-the linear programming approach to optimization modelling continues to show remarkable powers of survival. Since it first appeared we have had dynamic programming, and other non-linear optimization techniques of one sort or another, as well as the great publicity given to dynamic computer models of the Forrester type-which might be regarded as owing something to the arts of control systems engineering. These come and go but linear programming seems to go on for ever. It was, of course, given a great fillip by the development of the widespread use of computers; and when, because of the tendency of LP models to be ‘large, cumbersome and complex’ it began to make excessive demands on computer storage space and time, it was given a fresh lease of life by the development of techniques to reduce these demands. The method of improved Z substitutes described by Beglari and Laughton is specifically directed towards cutting down the demands of large LP programmes; and a paper by D. W. Dreier of ESSO Eastern Inc. is also entirely devoted to advances in the technology of large scale modelling with reference to LP models. Despite the quality of these developments one is left feeling that the LP model often remains a black box that does not readily show the user the route to the optimum that it produced, and it is easy to understand the prediliction of many decision makers for simulation models on which they can try out their own necessarily imperfect solutions which might involve barely quantifiable, perhaps because half-formed, political and social constraints. The one example of a major econometric model (by Pindyck of MIT, reporting work by himself and MacAvoy) manages to get further away than most such models from an almost ritualistic approach, namely the setting up of a loglinear equation in the hope of finding statistically different parametkrs by regression gnalysis. UGfortunately-it is quite often possible to produce a number of very different models with different input factors producing very different predictions but all having statistically significant parameters. Pindyck’s model appears to have a good deal more imagination incorporated in it than most such models but does not, it seems to me, entirely escape the general objection to this type of model. Altogether this is a stimulating set of papers from some of the best exponents of the thriving art of energy modelling. L. G. BREAKER UKAEA London
The Practice of Manpower Forecasting, edited by B. AHAMAD and M. BLAUG, Elsevier, Amsterdam (1972), 345 pp.
D.Fl.32.00 (hardback). This book is a collection of case studies-with a foreword by Sir Claus Moser, Director of the Central Statistical OfTice and Director of the Higher Education Research Unit, London School of Economics. It is a book for academics, politicians, administrators, industrialists and planners with an interest in the relationship between the education system and national skill resources to serve the economy.
LONG
RANGE
PLANNING