ILLUSIONS OF OPTIMALITY

Abstract The design of complex, real world systems involves a search for “just the right” combination of components that achieves the property known as “oplimality”. Yet optimality in the conventional senseusually ignores a vital measure of system performance: stability. Often, at least for problems outside the classroom, it is far more important to design a system that is stable than one that exhibits, on paper, seeminglysuperior performance. This paper discusses the importance of system stability and, as well, proposes a novel method for the inclusion of stability into the design process.