HaHaHello
2020-05-10 11:03:02
You and others have complained that the single word "stable" is not informative enough. Actually, this single word contains all the information you need.
(1) Before I explain the true meaning, I just write down the meaning of the word "stable": The poles of the transfer function are all on the left half of s-plane.
(2) Almost everything in the real world (i.e. the inflation in economy) is a feedback system and the subject to study the feedback system is the theory of control. Hence, before I discuss the situation in Sweden, I will discuss an easier to understand situation: Suppose you want to climb your aeroplane to 3,000 feet. After your aeroplane has reached 3,000 feet and you have perfectly trimmed your aeroplane, you will find that your aeroplane will not stay at 3,000 feet. For a small aeroplane, you will find that your areoplane will move up and down between 2,900 to 3,100 feet. Although the aeroplane is going up and down in this small fluctuation, the aeroplane is said (in this aspect) to be stable. This is the reason that a student pilot can pass the license examination if he/she can maintain +/- 100 feet in altitude. For bigger commercial airliners, the margin is +/- 50 feet.
(3) Now, we can look at the daily new cases in Sweden. It is easier to see that the number of new daily new cases from 1st May to 5th May have been reduced from that in late April. If someone follows my suggestion to plot a 7-day moving average, then one can see clearly this improvement. However, I refuted to draw the conclusion that herd immunity has been achieved and I insisted that we still needed a few more days to see the development. This is because this reduction of daily new cases looks like a natural fluctuation of a stable feedback system (just like the aeroplane in the above example). In the past few days, the numbers of daily new cases in Sweden have been much higher than that between 1st May to 5th May. My word “stable” roughly describes this situation.
(4) Of course, it is not always easy to from the graph that whether a feedback system is stable. In the classical theory of control, people use a mathematical method called the “Laplace Transform” to transform the differential equation that describes the system to a simpler algebraic equation. The solutions of this algebraic equation are called the poles. Mathematically, we can prove that the system is stable is the real part of all these poles are negative numbers (i.e. the poles are all on the left half of the s-plane.)
Therefore, if you read my word “stable” next times, then I am telling you something similar to the above.
HaHaHello
2020-05-10 12:45:44
I know you are not.
I just try to explain the situation a bit clearly because there are many different people with different background on the Internet. Sometimes, people (including myself) have used some words with technological meanings.
My explanation just try to remind the readers that sometimes they need to search their knowledge base in order to fully understand what some other people try to say. In this case, a lot of readers who have a degree in electronic, mechanical and other engineering have learnt the Control Engineering. Hence, they have the knowledge to understand what I have said. However, they may not have applied their knowledge when they read my comment.