Simulation

A simulation is an imitation of some real thing, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviors of a selected physical or abstract system. more...

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Historically, the word had negative connotations:

…for Distinction Sake, a Deceiving by Words, is commonly called a Lye, and a Deceiving by Actions, Gestures, or Behavior, is called Simulation… Robert South (1643-1716)

However, the connection between simulation and dissembling later faded out and is now only of linguistic interest.

Simulation is used in many contexts, including the modeling of natural systems or human systems in order to gain insight into their functioning. Other contexts include simulation of technology for performance optimization, safety engineering, testing, training and education. Simulation can be used to show the eventual real effects of alternative conditions and courses of action.

Key issues in simulation include acquisition of valid source information about the referent, selection of key characteristics and behaviours, the use of simplifying approximations and assumptions within the simulation, and fidelity and validity of the simulation outcomes.

Types of simulation

Historically, simulations used in different fields developed largely independently, but 20th century studies of Systems theory and Cybernetics combined with spreading use of computers across all those fields have led to some unification and a more systematic view of the concept.

Physical and interactive simulation

Physical simulation refers to simulation in which physical objects are substituted for the real thing. These physical objects are often chosen because they are smaller or cheaper than the actual object or system.

Interactive simulation is a special kind of physical simulation, often referred to as a human in the loop simulation, in which physical simulations include human operators, such as in a flight simulator.

Computer simulation

A computer simulation is an attempt to model a real-life situation on a computer so that it can be studied to see how the system works. By changing variables, predictions may be made about the behaviour of the system.

An interesting application of computer simulation is to simulate computers. The related software is called simulator, which can be further divided into instruction set simulators or full system simulators.

Computer simulation has become a useful part of modeling many natural systems in physics, chemistry and biology, and human systems in economics and social science (the computational sociology) as well as in engineering to gain insight into the operation of those systems. A good example of the usefulness of using computers to simulate can be found in the field of network traffic simulation. In such simulations the model behaviour will change each simulation according to the set of initial parameters assumed for the environment. Computer simulations are often considered to be human out of the loop simulations.

Read more at Wikipedia.org