Flow chart

1. A tool of systems analysts, utilized in order to help conceptualize existing information flows and other sequences and to visualize the impacts of projected changes.

2. An overall schematic representation of a computer programme in its essential features (independent of the computer). Before the instructions of a programme are written down, the flow chart must be used to ascertain the sequence of the steps of the programme. These individual steps are written down in small boxes whose shape is different for assignments, tests, comparisons, and decisions. The sequence or flow of the calculation is ascertained by connecting these boxes by arrows.

3. The flow graph of a societal system is a representation of its processes, their directionality, and the multilateral pattern of relationships within a system. It depicts the course of institutional interactions that eventuate in the varying values of state variables over time. It may be viewed as an amplification of the interaction matrix in interrelating the state or main variables through a set of intermediate and auxiliary variables. Each of the variables in the flow graph receives or emits a number of information links to other variables. For a given variable, the number and types of links to it signify its relative importance in the system, those with the largest number being the most important from a control and constraint point of view, those with a maximum number being the most salient. The picture or society that emerges from the flow graph elucidates the nature of society as complex system.