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[PAST EVENT] Colloquium: Advances in Computer Simulation
March 15, 2013
3pm - 4pm
This talk focuses on the way that advances in the field of computer simulation are driven by the continuous interplay of the following:
* inspiration, which may be motivated by sheer curiosity as well as specific theoretical or practical problems;
* intuition, which may guide the search for a problem solution or may lead to the discovery of new truth when neither inductive reasoning nor deductive reasoning is sufficient to make progress at critical points in the work;
* abstraction, which encompasses both simulation modeling and the simulation analysis required to build a model, design experiments using that model, and draw appropriate conclusions from the observed results; and
* experimentation, which is computer based and thus differs fundamentally from all other types of empirical scientific work by the large potential efficiency improvements that are achievable using appropriate Monte Carlo methods.
Examples from several application domains illustrate the power that computer simulation professionals derive from this synergy. This talk is adapted from a plenary address given at the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference. The slides are available online via the link given below.
Bio: James R. Wilson is a professor in the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University, where he served as director of graduate programs (1995-1999) and head (1999-2007). He received a B.A. degree in mathematics from Rice University in 1970, and he received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial engineering from Purdue University in 1977 and 1979, respectively. He has served on the faculties of The University of Texas at Austin (1979-1984); Purdue University (1985-1991); and North Carolina State University (1991-present).
* inspiration, which may be motivated by sheer curiosity as well as specific theoretical or practical problems;
* intuition, which may guide the search for a problem solution or may lead to the discovery of new truth when neither inductive reasoning nor deductive reasoning is sufficient to make progress at critical points in the work;
* abstraction, which encompasses both simulation modeling and the simulation analysis required to build a model, design experiments using that model, and draw appropriate conclusions from the observed results; and
* experimentation, which is computer based and thus differs fundamentally from all other types of empirical scientific work by the large potential efficiency improvements that are achievable using appropriate Monte Carlo methods.
Examples from several application domains illustrate the power that computer simulation professionals derive from this synergy. This talk is adapted from a plenary address given at the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference. The slides are available online via the link given below.
Bio: James R. Wilson is a professor in the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University, where he served as director of graduate programs (1995-1999) and head (1999-2007). He received a B.A. degree in mathematics from Rice University in 1970, and he received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial engineering from Purdue University in 1977 and 1979, respectively. He has served on the faculties of The University of Texas at Austin (1979-1984); Purdue University (1985-1991); and North Carolina State University (1991-present).
Contact
Larry Leemis, Department of Mathematics