Computer Simulation As A Building Block of A Computer Experiment
In a computer simulation, a "computer" model typically replaces a traditional mathematical model. Whereas a mathematical model is traditionally solved analytically, a computer model can be solved numerically: this is what a computer simulation of a system (typically a physical system) is about. (Sometimes, an analytical solution to a mathematical model is not known. However,a computer simulation can find an approximate solution. Typically,this happens with differential equations).
In a computer experiment a computer model is used to make inferences about some underlying system. The idea is that the computer model takes the place of an experiment we cannot do: the phrase in silico experiment is also used. At the moment, for example, the debate on climate change is being informed largely from evaluations of climate simulators running on some of the largest computers in the world, which are being used to investigate the impact of a substantial increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. In this case, the accumulation of many simulations on different initial conditions form an experiment.
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Famous quotes containing the words computer, simulation, building, block and/or experiment:
“The archetype of all humans, their ideal image, is the computer, once it has liberated itself from its creator, man. The computer is the essence of the human being. In the computer, man reaches his completion.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“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)
“No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 16:23.
Jesus to Peter.
“The man who invented Eskimo Pie made a million dollars, so one is told, but E.E. Cummings, whose verse has been appearing off and on for three years now, and whose experiments should not be more appalling to those interested in poetry than the experiment of surrounding ice-cream with a layer of chocolate was to those interested in soda fountains, has hardly made a dent in the doughy minds of our so-called poetry lovers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)