March 17, 2005

Somebody else did the work first

So it finally occurred to me to check the Wikipedia to see what it had to say about simulation. What I found, of course, is that not only is there an article, but it neatly sumarizes some of the concepts I was trying to write about earlier. Just what I should have expected from the Wikipedia :-)

The article classifies simulations into Stochastic (what I would call Probabilistic) vs. Deterministic. In practice, Deterministic simulations aren't very common, probably because random numbers are such a powerful tool. Much more useful is the distinction between Continuous and Discrete simulations. That's much more succinct terminology than time slice and critical event. The article also talks about agent-based simulation, which is basically what I described when I talked about my early science fair projects.

So, now I have to buckle down and figure out something non-obvious to tell you about simulations.

4 Comments:

At September 20, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Are you the same Jeremy Hussell as at LANL? (sure looks like it from the material) Are there any posts here or elsewhere that describe the general trajectory of your current work? I'm interested in what you're doing, but having a hard time getting a general picture together of what you're talking about (and lacking the time to read months of archives.)

 
At September 21, 2005, Blogger JeremyHussell said...

I am that same Jeremy Hussell. (As far as I can tell, there are only ~50 Hussells in the world, and I'm the only one named Jeremy.) I moved to Toronto at the beginning of September though.

The posts on this blog are unrelated to what I did at LANL. The blog itself has also changed direction, so that I've been posting less and less about simulation. Almost every post before this one is relevant, and almost every post after this one goes off into other subjects. Recently, I've even started posting things about myself, instead of lecturing about my opinions on certain narrow aspects of computer science.

I suppose you arrived here via Shiny Things Distract Us?

 
At September 21, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually I think it was via that Phoenix guy via STDU, but same net.

So you're not at LANL now? I'm rather interested in some of the work you were talking about and what specifically you were (are?) doing, particularly in the area of simulated agent-based environments...and much of the terminology you use points to the likelihood that the work you are/were doing is of specific interest to me.

As for the blog itself, that's all whatever that is :) - I mean, while I'm sure you're a fascinating person on a variety of cultural and professional levels and all that, the reason I'm here commenting is because I was piqued by some of your posts about your specific projects.

 
At September 21, 2005, Blogger JeremyHussell said...

At LANL, I was in the HCI group of their research library. The agent-based environments I mentioned were science fair projects I worked on in elementary school, back around 1991 or so. They were pretty primitive (hey, I was only 12!), so I doubt there's anything of interest there for you.

I'm now at the University of Toronto, doing I know not what yet. Possibly writing a SAT solver.

 

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