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.