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Systems Simulation: The Art and Science [Instructor's Manual]
Systems Simulation The Art and Science - Instructor's Manual Author:Robert E. Shannon The intent of this manual is twofold. First to suggest ways in which the textbook can be utilized in the classroom and second to provide answers to all except the discussion type questions. — The philosophy upon which this book is based, differs somewhat from most presently available simulation texts. In examining the other books I found that the... more »y were either (1) basically statistic texts with examples from simulation applications or (2) simulation programming language texts. In my own teaching I found both of these approaches to be unsatisfactory.
If the class consists mostly of engineers, operations researchers, and/or computer scientists, they already have a good background in statistics. Therefore, the course becomes 80% redundant to previous work if the emphasis is on statistics. If the class consists predominantly of administrative science or business administration students who are interested in how simulation can be used by management (i.e., they will not themselves be designing simulation models), the emphasis on statistics is wasted.
My objection to the second type of text (i.e., the simulation programming language emphasis) springs from two opinions. First of all it seems to me that to say I am teaching simulation when in fact I am teaching GPSS, SIMSCRIPT, DYNAMO or any other language is analogous to saying I am teaching mathematics when I teach FORTRAN. There are very important concepts to be learned independent of the language used. There are also very important trade-offs to be made in the designing and running of a simulation model which also are language independent. The student may never be made aware of these if he jumps directly into the problems of the semantics of a particular language. I don't think you learn a technical field by learning the language or jargon.
My second objection stems from the fact that most students will have a FORTRAN compiler available to them no matter where...« less