Dipartimento di InformaticaUniversità degli Studi di Milano

Simulation2014/15

MSc in Computer science · University of Milan · Lectures are in Italian · 3 credits · 24 hours

Archived edition: this page is kept for reference, and some materials or links may no longer be available.

This course introduces to the theory and to some applications of stochastic simulation. The course is divided into two modules: this page refers to the first one (Theory and techniques). The second module (Queue theory and software tools) is held by Prof. Trubian and will start on mid-April.

News

  1. Office hours of May 28th canceled

    The office hours of May 28th are canceled; students can arrange an appointment via e-mail.

  2. Office hours of April 2nd canceled

    The office hours of April 2nd are canceled; students can arrange an appointment via e-mail.

  3. Suspension of the Simulation lesson

    The Simulation class of March, 31st is canceled.

  4. Office hours rescheduled on 12/3

    Office hours of today will start at 16:00.

  5. Office hours for the spring semester

    Office hours for the spring semester will be on Thursday at 14:30 in the teacher's office, starting from 5/3.

  6. Schedule change for the Simulation course

    Starting March 6th, 2015 the Simulation class schedule will change as follows: Tuesday 15:30–17:30, aula 5; Friday 8:30–10:30, aula 5.

  7. Office hours canceled

    Regular office hour are canceled until next semester; students can arrange an appointment via e-mail.

  8. Semester for the Simulation course

    The class of Simulation will be delivered in the spring semester.

  9. Office hours for the fall semester

    Office hours for the fall semester will be on Tuesday at 14:30 in the teacher's office, starting from 9/9.

Course schedule

Lectures will take place at the Computer science department, according to the following schedule:

Day Hour Place
Tuesday 15:30 - 17:30 aula 5
Friday 8:30 - 10:30 aula 5

Any change to the schedule will be announced in class and published in paragraph News of this page.

Office hours

By appointment, room 5015 of the Computer Science Department. It is possible contact the teacher by e-mail, taking care to read in advance the guide prepared by Prof. Sebastiano Vigna and clearly specifying in the message the course name and the academic year. In particular, students are encouraged to always use their academic address (i.e. based on the domain studenti.unimi.it) signing with name and student ID number and recalling that the response time may vary depending on the teacher commitments.

Course material

The course is based on the following textbook: Sheldon M. Ross, Simulation, fourth edition, Elsevier/Academic Press, Amsterdam, 2006 (ISBN 978-0125980630).

Syllabus

The course explains the topics listed in the lecture calendar, covering the textbook contents in chapters 1 to 9.

Lectures calendar

The links allow to download Wolfram Mathematica notebooks containing some of the simulations shown in class. These documents are provided as an example: the course is not about learning this software tool and the examination will not address his knowledge. However, students are encouraged to independently implement the techniques explained in class, possibly in different languages.

Lecture Date Topic Material
L01 04/03/2015 Examples of complex system simulation
L02 06/03/2015 Pseudorandom number simulation
L03 10/03/2015 Simulation of discrete random variables: the inverse transform method
    L04 13/03/2015 Simulation of continuous random variables: inverse transform method and methods for the normal distribution
    L05 17/03/2015 Simulation through plugin and acceptance-rejection techniques
    L06 20/03/2015 Simulation of discrete event systems
    L07 24/03/2015 Statistical analysis of simulated data: point estimation
    L08 27/03/2015 Statistical analysis of simulated data: interval estimation and bootstrap techniques
    L09 10/04/2015 Variance reduction techniques: use antithetic variables and control variates
    L10 14/04/2015 Variance reduction techniques: use of control variates and reduction by conditioning
    L11 17/04/2015 Variance reduction techniques: reduction by conditioning and stratified sampling
    L12 21/04/2015 Statistical validation techniques

    Exam modalities

    The exam consists in an oral test about the program of one module and in a project about the remaining course module, by appointment.