Actus Potentia

What is a Concept Map?

The concept map is a visual presentation and organization of the existing knowledge.

The development of the concept map gives the problem solver an opportunity to sharpen his/her knowledge and comprehension. The use of concept map sharpens a user's skill in application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Building a Concept Map

Using a Concept Map

Knowledge:
Collecting definitions, laws, and relationships to establish the nodes on the concept map.		 Comprehension:
Understanding the information so that the knowledge is organized to draw the paths on a concept map.		 Application:
Using methods and information in new situations and solve problems.		 Analysis:
Recognizing patterns and hidden meanings and improve understanding.		 Synthesis:
Using old ideas to create new ones, generalize from given facts, predict and draw conclusions.		 Evaluation:
Comparing ideas and make choices based on arguments with reasoning and result.
Concept Map Figure-1

The concept map is a network of nodes connected by paths as shown in the Figure above.

The paths show the relationships that exist between the variables through laws and principles, derived relationships, definitions, and sum nodes.

Variables: The causes and effects are the variables in a problem. For engineering problems, some typical variables are load, stress, reaction-rate, temperature, etc. For problems in economics or business, some typical variables are equilibrium price, surplus/shortage, revenue, profit, capital expenditure, etc.

These variables are related to each other through:

  • Laws/principles: Newton's Laws, Le Chatelier's Principle, Law of increasing opportunity cost, etc.
  • Relationships: Variation of drag coefficient with Reynolds number for a sphere, supply curve of wine-grapes with rainfall, etc.
  • Definitions: Definition of kinetic energy, definition of marginal cost, etc.
  • Sum Nodes: These nodes add up the influences from various sources.

Concept-Map
Screen Shots

Each link connecting two nodes on a concept map has a cost associated with it. This cost is assigned by the user during the development of the concept map. For problems in science and engineering, the cost of a solution procedure is equivalent to the effort involved. For example, solving a non-linear equation is more difficult compared to solving a linear equation. In business problems, this cost could be in real cash.

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