Book Image

Hands-On Simulation Modeling with Python

By : Giuseppe Ciaburro
Book Image

Hands-On Simulation Modeling with Python

By: Giuseppe Ciaburro

Overview of this book

Simulation modeling helps you to create digital prototypes of physical models to analyze how they work and predict their performance in the real world. With this comprehensive guide, you'll understand various computational statistical simulations using Python. Starting with the fundamentals of simulation modeling, you'll understand concepts such as randomness and explore data generating processes, resampling methods, and bootstrapping techniques. You'll then cover key algorithms such as Monte Carlo simulations and Markov decision processes, which are used to develop numerical simulation models, and discover how they can be used to solve real-world problems. As you advance, you'll develop simulation models to help you get accurate results and enhance decision-making processes. Using optimization techniques, you'll learn to modify the performance of a model to improve results and make optimal use of resources. The book will guide you in creating a digital prototype using practical use cases for financial engineering, prototyping project management to improve planning, and simulating physical phenomena using neural networks. By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to construct and deploy simulation models of your own to overcome real-world challenges.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Started with Numerical Simulation
5
Section 2: Simulation Modeling Algorithms and Techniques
10
Section 3: Real-World Applications

Understanding the central limit theorem

The Monte Carlo method is essentially a numerical method for calculating the expected value of random variables; that is, an expected value that cannot be easily obtained through direct calculation. To obtain this result, the Monte Carlo method is based on two fundamental theorems of statistics: the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem.

Law of large numbers

This theorem states the following: considering a very large number of variables, , the integral that defines the average value is approximate to the estimate of the expected value. Let's try to give an example so that you understand this. We flip a coin 10 times, 100 times, and 1,000 times and check how many times we get heads. We can put the results we obtained into a table, as follows:

4.4 – Table showing the results for coin toss

Figure 4.4 – Table showing the results for coin toss

Analyzing the last column of the previous table, we can see that the value of the frequency...