Alan Ismaiel, Ivan Ruchkin, Jason Shu, Oleg Sokolsky, and Insup Lee won the Best Contributed Theoretical Paper Award at the 54th Winter Simulation Conference (WSC 2021). Below is the title and abstract for their paper:
Title: Data Generation with PROSPECT: a Probability Specification Tool
Abstract: Stochastic simulations of complex systems often rely on sampling dependent discrete random variables. Currently, their users are limited in expressing their intention about how these variables are distributed and related to each other over time. This limitation leads the users to program complex and error-prone sampling algorithms. This paper introduces a way to specify, declaratively and precisely, a temporal distribution over discrete variables. Our tool PROSPECT infers and samples this distribution by solving a system of polynomial equations. The evaluation on three simulation scenarios shows that the declarative specifications are easier to write, 3x more succinct than imperative sampling programs, and are processed correctly by PROSPECT.
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