Types of models There are many types of models, including the mental models we each use to understand how things work in the real world: friends, family, colleagues, car drivers, town where you live, things that you buy, economy, sports, politics, or your own body. The whole modeling thing is actually about finding the way from the problem to its solution through a risk‐free world where we are allowed to make mistakes, undo things, go back in time, and start over again.
After we have built the model – and sometimes even as we build the model – we start to explore and understand the original system's structure and behavior, test how the system will behave under a variety of conditions, play and compare scenarios, and optimize. After we find our solution, we then can map it to the real world. This is still more an art than a science. The world of models The real worldĨ AnyLogic 6 in Three Days Modeling The model‐building phases ‐ mapping the real world to the world of models, choosing the abstraction level, and choosing the modeling language are less formalized than the process of using models to solve problems. The model is always less complex than the original system. This process assumes abstraction: we omit the details we think are irrelevant and we keep those we think are important.
If this is so, we leave the real world and go to the world of models as shown in the figure below. We build a model of a real system: its representation in a modeling language. Modeling is one of the ways to solve real‐world problems. In many cases, we can’t afford to find the right solutions by experimenting with real objects: building, destroying, making changes may be too expensive, dangerous, or just impossible. Andrei Borshchev and partially available on AnyLogic website. Modeling and simulation modeling This chapter is from "The Big Book of Simulation Modeling: Featuring AnyLogic" being currently written by Dr. AnyLogic 6 in Three Days A quick course in simulation modeling