Using null effects estimators in the analysis of simulation output

  • Authors:
  • Lee W. Schruben;David Goldsman;Douglas J. Morrice

  • Affiliations:
  • School of OR&IE, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY;School of ISyE, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA;MSIS Department, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas and End to End Simulation Department, Schlumberger Austin Research, Austin, Texas

  • Venue:
  • WSC '96 Proceedings of the 28th conference on Winter simulation
  • Year:
  • 1996

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Abstract

In a simulation experiment there are certain null effects whose true values are known to be zero. This paper investigates various estimators of the null effects. We apply these estimators of zero in two ways. First, null effects estimators are used to construct confidence intervals. We derive a null effects version of the batch means confidence interval that has certain desirable properties. Second, null effects estimators are used as control variates in variance reduction schemes. The achieved variance reductions are modest, but we present some interesting applications; for example, the output from one simulation model can be used to compute control variates for the output of another.