
Chapter 8
A Stochastic System and Its
Corresponding Deterministic System
Deterministic systems involving ordinary differential equations or delay differ-
ential equations, though widely used in practice (in part beca use of the ease of
their use in simulation studies), have proven le ss descriptive when applied to
problems with small population size. To address this issue, s tochastic systems
involving continuous time Markov chain (CTMC) models or CTMC models
with delays are often used when dealing with low species count.
The goals of this chapter are two-fold: one is to give an introduction on
how to simulate a CTMC model or a CTMC model with delays,