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--- rem4:experimental_designs_ii [2008/10/13 11:51] – thorisson
+++ rem4:experimental_designs_ii [2024/04/29 13:33] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1
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 === Using Models to Validate and Measure - a.k.a. Simulation ===
-| What simulation is  | A simplified model of subject under study.  \\ Sometimes only the environment is simulated.  |
+| What simulation is  | A simplified model of subject under study - that is, a simplification not of the key causal factors in the phenomenon, which must remain in our model for it to be useful, but rather a reduction (sometimes a radical one) of the "extra stuff that really doesn't matter".  |
 | What it does  | Simplifies! Makes it easier to \\ (A) set up testing conditions, \\ (B) control independent variables, \\ (C) make changes to the independent variables,(D) measure the results.  |
-| When to use  | When the complexity of that which is to be modeled/understood becomes so great that mathematical models are intractable and hypothesis falsification would take decades, centuries or millennia.  |
+| When to use  | When the complexity of that which is to be modeled/understood becomes so great that mathematical models are intractable and hypothesis falsification would take decades, centuries or millennia, or is simply out of the question (as in e.g. astrophysics).  |
 | Kinds of simulation methodologies | Continuous time and state: E.g. differential equations. \\  Discrete time/state: E.g. automata. \\ |
 | Relation between scientific theories and simulations  | To build a simulation we need a theory that tells us how things relate to each other.  |