The Power of Simulation

Lesson 1, page 4 of 5

Simulation is a powerful and important tool because it provides a way in which alternative designs, plans and/or policies can be evaluated without having to experiment on a real system A subunit of the world separated by a boundary from the rest of the world. The description of the system is comprised of the relations within the system as well as those characterizing the action of the outside world on the system., which may be prohibitively costly, time-consuming, or simply impractical to do. That is, it allows you to ask "What if?" questions about a system without having to experiment on the actual system itself (and hence incur the costs of field tests, prototypes, etc.).

A few wide-ranging examples of how simulation can be used to ask such "What if?" questions in order to solve real-world problems in business, engineering and science include: