Practical Data Analysis Cookbook

Chapter 11. Simulations

In this chapter, you will learn the following recipes:

• Using SimPy to simulate the refueling process of a gas station
• Simulating out-of-energy occurrences for an electric car
• Determining if a population of sheep is in danger of extinction due to a wolf pack

Introduction

Obtaining data is always cumbersome: collected data is almost always dirty and requires lots of work to extract the features that you are after. Also, collected data is almost always myopic in its scope: you observe only a portion of all the interactions that happen in any given environment.

However, you can simulate certain situations. Simulations come in handy when, among other things, it is impossible to observe every single part of the environment, if you ...