8/3/2020 Week 1 Homework - Summer 2020: Simulation and Modeling for Engineering and Science - ISYE-6644-OAN/O01

Week 1 Homework - Summer 2020

Due May 22 at 11:59pm Points 13 Questions 13
Available May 15 at 8am - May 22 at 11:59pm 8 days Time Limit None

Instructions
Please answer all the questions below.

This quiz was locked May 22 at 11:59pm.

Attempt History
Attempt Time Score
LATEST Attempt 1 2 minutes 11.5 out of 13

Score for this quiz: 11.5 out of 13

Submitted May 22 at 2:16am
This attempt took 2 minutes.

Question 1 1 / 1 pts

(Lesson 1.3: Deterministic Model.) Suppose you throw a rock off a cliff
having height = 1000 feet. You're a strong bloke, so the initial
downward velocity is = -100 feet/sec (slightly under 70 miles/hr).
Further, in this neck of the woods, it turns out there is no friction in the
atmosphere - amazing! Now you remember from your Baby Physics class
that the height after time is

When does the rock hit the ground?

a. -11.625 sec

b. 2 sec

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Correct!
c. 5.375 sec

Set

and solve for t. Quadratics are easy:

which we take as the answer since the negative answer doesn't

make practical sense.

d. 11.625 sec

e. 10 sec

Set

and solve for t. Quadratics are easy:

which we take as the answer since the negative answer doesn't

make practical sense.

Question 2 0 / 1 pts

(Lesson 1.3: Stochastic Model.) Consider a single-server queueing

system where the times between customer arrivals are independent,
identically distributed Exp(λ = 2/hr) random variables; and the service
times are i.i.d. Exp(µ = 3/hr). Unfortunately, if a potential arriving customer
sees that the server is occupied, he gets mad and leaves the system.
Thus, the system can have either 0 or 1 customer in it at any time. This is
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what’s known as an M/M/1/1 queue. If denotes the probability that a

customer is being served at time t, trust me that it can be shown that

If the system is empty at time 0, i.e., , what is the probability

that there will be no people in the system at time 1 hr?

a. 1

b. 2/3

ou Answered c. 0.397

orrect Answer d. 0.603

At time , we have

Question 3 1 / 1 pts

(Lesson 1.4: History.) Harry Markowitz (one of the big wheels in

simulation language development) won his Nobel Prize for portfolio theory
in 1990, though the work that earned him the award was conducted much
earlier in the 1950s. Who won the 1990 Prize with him? You are allowed
to look this one up.

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Correct!
a. Merton Miller and William Sharpe

for accomplishments in related (but slightly different) subject areas.

b. Henry Kissinger

c. Albert Einstein

d. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

for accomplishments in related (but slightly different) subject areas.

Question 4 1 / 1 pts

(Lesson 1.5: Applications.) Which of the following situations might be

good candidates to use simulation? (There may be more than one correct
answer.)

a. We put $5000 into a savings account paying 2% continuously

compounded interest per year, and we are interested in determining the
account's value in 5 years.

Correct!
b. We are interested in investing one half of our portfolio in fixed-interest
U.S. bonds and the remaining half in a stock market equity index. We have
some information concerning the distribution of stock market returns, but
we do not really know what will happen in the market with certainty.

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Correct!
c. We have a new strategy for baseball batting orders, and we would like to
know if this strategy beats other commonly used batting orders (e.g., a fast
guy bats first, a big, strong guy bats fourth, etc.). We have information on
the performance of the various team members, but there’s a lot of
randomness in baseball.

d. We have an assembly station in which “customers” (for instance, parts

to be manufactured) arrive every 5 minutes exactly and are processed in
precisely 4 minutes by a single server. We would like to know how many
parts the server can produce in a hour.

Correct!
e. Consider an assembly station in which parts arrive randomly, with
independent exponential interarrival times. There is a single server who
can process the parts in a random amount of time that is normally
distributed. Moreover, the server takes random breaks every once in a
while. We would like to know how big any line is likely to get.

Correct!
f. Suppose we are interested in determining the number of doctors needed
on Friday night at a local emergency room. We need to insure that 90% of
patients get treatment within one hour.

(a) and (d) do not require simulation, since we can easily “solve”
those models with a simple equation or two. (b), (c), (e), and (f) will
likely require simulation.

(a) and (d) do not require simulation, since we can easily “solve”
those models with a simple equation or two. (b), (c), (e), and (f) will
likely require simulation.

Question 5 1 / 1 pts

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(Lessons 1.6 and 1.7: Baby Examples.) The planet Glubnor has 50-day
years.

Suppose there are 2 Glubnorians in the room. What’s the probability that
they’ll have the same birthday?

a. 1/(49 · 50)

Correct!
b. 1/50

b. Let’s call the two guys A and B. Whatever A’s birthday is, the
probability that B matches it is 1/50.

Let’s try it another way. The total number of ways that two people can
have birthdays is 50 × 50 = 2500. The total number of ways that they
can have two different birthdays is 50 × 49 = 2450. Thus,

c. 1/25

d. 2/49

Let’s call the two guys A and B. Whatever A’s birthday is, the
probability that B matches it is 1/50.

Let’s try it another way. The total number of ways that two people
can have birthdays is 50 × 50 = 2500. The total number of ways
that they can have two different birthdays is 50 × 49 = 2450. Thus,

Question 6 1 / 1 pts

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(Lessons 1.6 and 1.7: Baby Examples.) The planet Glubnor has 50-day
years.

Now suppose there are 3 Glubnorians in the room. (They’re big, so the
room is getting crowded.) What’s the probability that at least two of them
have the same birthday?

a. 1/50

b. 2/50

c. 1/(49 · 50)

Correct!
d. 0.0592

d. I admit that this involves a teensy bit of probability (that you will
eventually review in Module 2), but it should be easy enough.
Mimicking the previous question, we have

d. I admit that this involves a teensy bit of probability (that you will
eventually review in Module 2), but it should be easy enough.
Mimicking the previous question, we have

Question 7 1 / 1 pts

(Lessons 1.6 and 1.7: Baby Examples.) Inscribe a circle in a unit square
and toss random darts at the square.

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Suppose that 380 of those darts land in the circle. Using the technology
developed in this lesson, what is the resulting estimate for ?

a. −3.14

b. 2.82

Correct! c. 3.04

(c), since the estimate × (proportion in circle).

d. 3.14

e. 3.82

(c), since the estimate × (proportion in circle).

Question 8 1 / 1 pts

(Lessons 1.6 and 1.7: Baby Examples.) Again inscribe a circle in a unit
square and toss random darts at the square.

What would our estimate be if we let and we applied the same

ratio strategy to estimate ?

Correct! a.

by the Law of Large Numbers.

b.

c. 3.04

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d. 3.14

e.

(a), by the Law of Large Numbers.

Question 9 1 / 1 pts

(Lessons 1.6 and 1.7: Baby Examples.) Suppose customers arrive at a

single-server ice cream parlor times 3, 6, 15, and 17. Further suppose
that it takes the server 7, 9, 6, and 8 minutes, respectively, to serve the
four customers. When does customer 4 leave the shoppe?

a. 18

b. 25

Correct!
c. 33

Here is the sequence of relevant events

d. 45

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(c). Here is the sequence of relevant events

Question 10 1 / 1 pts

(Lesson 1.8: Generating Randomness.) Suppose we are using the (awful)

pseudo-random number generator

with starting value ("seed") . Find the second PRN,

a. 0

b. 1/8

Correct! c. 7/8

We have

d. 3

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We have

and the answer is (c).

Question 11 1 / 1 pts

(Lesson 1.8: Generating Randomness.) Suppose we are using the

"decent" pseudo-random number generator

with seed = 12345678. Find the resulting integer . Feel free to use
something like Excel if you need to.

a. 352515241

b. 16808

Correct!
c. 1335380034

This is actually not quite so easy as it may seem, since you have to
be a little careful not to lose significant digits. We'll learn more about
this in Module 6. In any case,

where I multiplied the big numbers and took the mod with the help of
Excel.

d. 12345679

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(c). This is actually not quite so easy as it may seem, since you
have to be a little careful not to lose significant digits. We'll learn
more about this in Module 6. In any case,

where I multiplied the big numbers and took the mod with the help
of Excel.

Question 12 1 / 1 pts

(Lesson 1.8: Generating Randomness.) Suppose that we generate a

pseudo-random number = 0.128. Use this to generate an Exponential
random variate.

a. -6.17

Correct! b. 6.17

From the lesson notes, we have

So the answer is (b).Note: It turns out that

would also have been an acceptable answer. Can you see why?

c. -0.685

d. 0.685

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From the lesson notes, we have

So the answer is (b). Note: It turns out that

would also have been an acceptable answer. Can you see why?

Question 13 0.5 / 1 pts

(Lesson 1.9: Output Analysis.) BONUS: Which scenarios are most apt for
a steady-state analysis? (More than one answer may be right.)

a. We simulate a bank from noon till 1:00 pm.

Correct! b. We investigate a production line that runs 24/7.

c. We are interested in seeing what our portfolio is likely to be 3 months

from now.

orrect Answer d. We try to estimate the unemployment rate 30 years from now.

(b) and (d), which deal with long-term phenomena.

Quiz Score: 11.5 out of 13

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