
80 Discrete Event Simulation for Health Technology Assessment
single table instead of specifying them separately, with the age distribution
given for each sex (Table3.4).
This information can then be combined into a single distribution of the
proles, creating six age-sex intervals (Table3.5). Sampling from this joint
distribution using the equations given earlier would assign an entity a par-
ticular age and sex.
This idea can be extended to any number of characteristics. For example,
the three categories of disease severity could be added to Table3.5to describe
18proles of age, sex, and severity. Clearly, as more characteristics are ad