問27
頻出度★★★
解を求めるのにシミュレーションを適用する例として，最も適したものはどれか。
平成27年度 春期 ITパスポート試験 問27
ストラテジ系企業活動 › 業務分析・データ利活用
This question's explanation and your answers so far.
解説
問 27
Incorrectア
Finding the shortest project period from each task's duration and the precedence relationships among tasks with PERT (an arrow diagram) is a deterministic schedule calculation with a fixed procedure: you trace the earliest node times and latest node times to identify the critical path. The answer is uniquely determined from the given data, and there is no element of assuming conditions and running things in a mock manner, so this is a scheduling technique rather than a simulation.
Incorrectイ
Classifying customers by three indicators — cumulative purchase amount, most recent purchase date, and purchase frequency — and extracting the targets for direct mail is a customer analysis method called RFM analysis. It merely narrows down past actual data already at hand according to conditions and does not try out the future on a model, so it is not suitable as an example of simulation.
- ウ
正解 Simulation is a method of expressing a real object or phenomenon with formulas or a model, giving it preconditions and parameters, and running it in a mock manner so as to estimate future states or results that cannot actually be tried out. Choice ウ feeds the model with actual data — each product's annual sales results over the past 10 years — together with a forecast pattern of how the trade-area population will change from now on (an assumed future scenario), and it estimates the projected sales amount for the next 3 years, which has not happened yet. Because it obtains an answer by running the future, an uncertain subject, on a model under assumed conditions, this is the most appropriate example of applying simulation. The fact that you can prepare several population-change patterns and compare how the projected sales amount changes in each case is also typical of the way simulation is used. Therefore the correct answer is ウ.
Incorrectエ
Inputting values such as the mean time between failures (MTBF), the mean time to repair (MTTR), and the number of repair staff into a prescribed formula (a queueing-theory formula, for example) to find the average waiting time for repair is a calculation of substituting values into a formula. Once the input values are fixed, the answer is uniquely determined, and there is no process of changing the premises and running a model in a mock manner, so it is nothing more than a calculation with a formula, not a simulation.
ここがポイント
- Simulation is a method that models a real-world subject, gives it assumed conditions and parameters, and runs mock trials in order to estimate future situations or results that cannot actually be tried out. It is useful for forecasting the future, evaluating uncertain factors, and comparing alternatives by changing the conditions.
- Calculations that substitute values into a formula (MTBF, MTTR, and the like), deterministic schedule calculations with PERT, and narrowing down existing data as in RFM analysis are all calculations or analyses whose answers are uniquely determined; none of them is a simulation. Tell them apart by whether the future is estimated by running something in a mock manner.
用語