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Texas A&M University College of Engineering

Class 32

Posted on July 28, 2021 by Abigail Stason

Learning Objectives – Class 32

After today’s lecture, and after working the homework problems, the student should be able to

  • Perform a hand simulation solution for a simple engineering system

Topics covered in today’s class

Why you must often run each case multiple times: Consider the results of a single simulation for the trucks in the previous problem –  $480 profit/day. Boss says “Great job” and expecting great profits, goes and buys a Porsche. The job starts and the first day the job makes $230/day. Boss says “Bad employee”, fires you, and sells the Porsche at a 50% loss.

Now consider what you would get had you made multiple runs:  $480/day, $230/day, $420/day, $350/day, $380/day, $220/day, $260/day, $310/day, $490/day, …

See the problem? The $480/day was indeed a valid answer, but it was not the mean. Also, had you simulated the problem multiple times, the $230/day would have also shown up and you could have warned the boss of its occasional appearance. Running the simulation multiple times allows you to not only give the boss the daily mean, it also lets you predict the probable high and low daily values.

For an example of output, click here.

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