Qualitative and quantitative simulation: bridging the gap

摘要

Shortcomings of qualitative simulation and of quantitative simulation motivate combining them to do simulations exhibiting strengths of both. The resulting class of techniques is called semiquantitative simulation. One approach to semi-quantitative simulation is to use numeric intervals to represent incomplete quantitative information. In this research we demonstrate semi-quantitative simulation using intervals in an implemented semi-quantitative simulator called Q3. Q3 progressively refines a qualitative simulation, providing increasingly specific quantitative predictions which can converge to a numerical simulation in the limit while retaining important correctness guarantees from qualitative and interval simulation techniques.