Work in progress!

Symbols for Variables

Symbol Meaning What to type in text app1
▶ Intervention Variable !do
♥ Valued Variable (optional: more hearts = more value) !hearts
🙂 Valued Variable (alternative version) !smile
🙁 Cost Variable (optional: more symbols = more cost) !cost
◨ Binary Variable e.g. no/yes, false/true. Has only two Levels. !binary
◪ ‘lo-hi’ aka ‘proportional’ Variable e.g. percentage, amount of agreement. Has a (clear or vague) maximum and minimum; is not numerical. !lohi
◢ Continuous Variable e.g. distance, amount of money. Has no maximum, may have a zero minimum. !continuous
▙ Nominal Variable e.g. country. Levels do not have any clear ordering like better than or higher than. !nominal
▞ Ordinal Variable e.g. alert level !ordinal
♛ Rich Variable e.g. quality and extent of an intervention !rich
֍ Intersubjective (but not objective) Variable: people agree, after the fact !spiral
֍֍ Arguably intersubjective (but not objective) Variable: people have to decide how to agree !spiral!spiral
↺ Memory Variable e.g. skill level. Level of Variable depends on its own Level in previous moments !memory
🔍 Symbolic Variable e.g. a report, a theory !look
For each … “For each …” Variable, e.g. each day, each student. Actually a set of Variables, 1 for each day (or year, or student ) e.g. For each day
~ Continuous-time Variable. Actually a set of Variables stretching across time ~
┣ Episodic Variable at start of a time period, e.g. baseline !start
┫ Episodic Variable at end of a time period, e.g. endline !end
⇅ Opposite of e.g. “mortality” = people not dying. Before a Variable name. Useful when the best name for something is something we dont want. i.e. say opposite of mortality not lower mortality !ud
B: ▶ Intervention Variable under the control of stakeholder B B: !do
B: ♥ Variable valued by stakeholder B B: !hearts
B: 🙁 Variable which is a cost to stakeholder B B: !cost

Symbols for Rules (can be shown on the Arrow or on the consequence Variable)

Symbol Meaning What to type in text app
⇈ Same direction Rule e.g. more sunshine => feeling warmer !uu
⇅ Opposite direction Rule e.g. more wind => feeling less warm !ud
🞕 Optimise the level of the child Variable, as in “negative feedback” !optimise
Σ Aggregate Rule of a Variable set e.g. sum, median … !Sigma
⚯ Peer-to-peer Rule e.g. concentration levels of individual children in a class affect each other over time !peers
֍ Intersubjective (but not objective) Rule: people agree, after the fact !spiral
֍֍ Arguably intersubjective (but not objective) Rule: people have to decide how to agree !spiral!spiral

… More to come! …

How to get these symbols

Using pencil & paper? Just draw them!

Using PowerPoint etc? Just copy and paste them from this page.

In the Theorymaker drag-and-drop app, just edit the text of the Variable or arrow (by clicking on the gear wheel which appears when you hover your mouse over the arrow) and the icons appear - click on the one you want.

In the Theorymaker text app, to add these symbols to a Variable, just add the code in the right-hand column, e.g. !up, to the name of the Variable. But how to add them to an arrow? You create an arrow to How warm you feel from Strength of wind by indenting the latter by one space, like this:

How warm you feel
 Strength of wind

And you can add a label, e.g. ⇅ to an arrow by typing the code for it (!ud) in brackets just after the space, like this:

How warm you feel
 (!ud)Strength of wind

  1. In the interactive app there are icons you can click on to get all of these symbols (except ~ which should be on your keyboard)↩