?????
Hmmm. I'm not sure that's the complete answer... :D
A. What's a queue and what do they have to do with simulations?
A queue is a data structure that works like a a line at the bank (or anywhere else). It's a First In, First Out structure, meaning that as you put objects into the structure, they go in order, and when you ask the structure fo an element, it gives you whoever's first in line. Honestly, it all seems a lot like a linked list, so I hope some clarification in en route... But yeah, in simulations, we often need to represent "a bunch of people waiting on the same resource (like a limited # of bank tellers)," which in civilized society looks like a line. So, um, we make queues in simulations.
B. What's an example of a discrete event simulation? A continuous simulation?
Discrete, that's like: "Predict the price of this stock in 6 months." Any simulation that's only going to occur once, or where only certain data points are important instead of the whole process is a discrete simulation. I'm afraid I'm not as clear on these as I'd like to be, but I belive the aforementioned queue is rather important in all of this, too. Simulations operating on a 'next-event' (FIFO) principle are alse discrete, so one of those exciting "line at the bank" simulators would do the trick as well.
Continuous–oposite of discrete. Wolf and Deer that we're doing in class is continuous. The point of the simulation is to observe the ongoing interactions in the simulation, so every 'moment' (timesteps in W&D) is simulated. Weather forcasting is another continuous simulation.
Please , other people, jump in!
~Jim
C. Say you're a turtle collector...
And you need to know how many turtles you can fit in a box before they really start to run over each other...
Um...would a demo of a video game or software program count as a simulation? A demo is suppose to simulate how the actual, fully working version of the software is suppode to be. I guess that might count.
hahahaha...i want to be a turtle collector! i could travel the world, and be the best turtle collector EVER!
Exploring turtles bumping into one another would, in fact, be continuous. Mark Guzdial
