MCSim lives!

MCSim is some software that Frederic Bois wrote for our toxicology research over 10 years ago. I didn’t know it was still around, until Bill Harris wrote,

If you or your colleagues are interested, I’ve posted an MCSim quick reference card. Frédéric has graciously added the tabular nonlinearities feature to the latest beta version of the code.

I [Bill] have used ithink and Vensim for system dynamics work, but I’m currently
finding that MCSim seems to help me think better about key issues. Slide 8 of this presentation lists some possible reasons:

– MCSim leads me to think about the four phases of modeling (create a model, design experiments, analyze results, communicate results) separately, and I think each requires different thought processes. With an integrated solution such as ithink, I’m doing all four things at once.

– Because I have to pick a tool to analyze the results, I end up with more creative and hopefully more useful graphs and analysis than I would get with an integrated solution such as ithink.

– Because it’s open source, I can look “under the hood” if I wish to understand what it’s doing.

– Lsodes beats Euler integration.

Next I want to incorporate MCMC work into system dynamics models; I think that might make a real contribution.

Do you have ideas for other tools I should know about that address systems of ordinary differential equations and MCMC?

My reply: there’s also AD Model Builder, which I haven’t had a chance to try out yet, but looks cool.

3 thoughts on “MCSim lives!

  1. Perhaps I should have noted three blog postings that speak to my current MCSim usage. Making musical sense by email is an excerpt of a conversation between me and Greg Sandow that incorporates an MCSim model. I used Gnuplot's dumb terminal to create the text-mode graphics as an experiment to see if that would be effective in carrying out an analytic discussion by email. Greg didn't like that as much, as you can see, but others have found it helpful, for one can intersperse comments and graphs in replies.

    Is TAFTO a good idea? Really? shows MCSim used with J to create and display the results of factorial designs with a deterministic MCSim model.

    Finally, An accidental experiment presents my musings on why static presentations of MCSim models I've done seem to have engendered more reaction from readers than interactive models I've published using commercial simulators.

    Feedback is welcome.

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