Simulation and Modelling
Simulation and modelling are computer-based tools developed to represent reality. They are widely used to analyse behaviours and to understand processes. Models allow demonstration of past changes as well as the examination of various transformations and their impact on each other and other considered factors.
They can help to understand the connections between factors and events and to examine their dynamics. Simulation is a process that represents a structure and change of a system. In simulation some aspects of reality are duplicated or reproduced, usually within the model. The main purpose of simulation is to discern what would really happen in the real world if certain conditions, imitated by the model, developed.
Although modelling and simulation became even more popular with the development of computing technology, application of these techniques have certain limits. Models represent a simplification of a system that is being examined; therefore the results need to be carefully considered.
As the complexity of real systems increases models need to be more and more complex to represent the reality most accurately. In result, they may become increasingly difficult to understand and to be operated. Their complex nature can cause problems with using and managing results.
As models constitute a simpler version of reality, certain factors can be omitted, and in consequence can lead to mistakes. Such mistakes are not easy to be found and corrected.
Read more about this topic: Futures Techniques
Famous quotes containing the words simulation and/or modelling:
“Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists, is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive simulation of the journey’s fits and starts, rehearses life’s own fragmentation. More even than the novel, it embraces the contingency of things.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“The windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every tree and sandbank and rugged draw. I found that I remembered the conformation of the land as one remembers the modelling of human faces.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)