The Language of Abstraction and Representation

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the representation side of the process of building a simulation. Selecting how to represent the real system in a model is essential for the resultant simulation. There are various ways to represent a real system in a model – a diagram, an equation, a text script or others. The chapter discusses the most important representation paradigms, and uses finite‐state machine as an example to show how to abstract a system into a model under certain assumptions. It describes all major approaches to representation, including informal methods and formal methods for representation, which are especially relevant to computer simulation. While numerous semi‐formal methods are available for representing real‐world systems the authors only present diagramming and rule‐based representation, which are most relevant to computer simulation. A form of representation can be natural language description, such as a story book or a script given to actors to perform in a film.