Behavior Software Modeling

I have always wondered, how do we succesfully model what happens in the real world? For instance, if you have a mathematical formula that calculates how long it will take someone to get from their home to the grocery store, how would you try to get the software to accurately display this? Short answer: There are many ways.

1st way: You could have some preset values in a list, and depending on which person you are selecting to go to the grocery store, you can just have the value already programmed into the formulas. For instance, Judy drives really slow, so if the grocery store is 30 miles away, and she drives at 30 miles per hour, it will take her 1 hour to get to the grocery store. If Karen goes to the store, she loves to speed, so if she drives at 90 miles an hour, she would get to the grocery store in 20 minutes, which is 1/3rd of the time it would take Judy to get to the store.

2nd way: You could plug this into a mathematical modeling system that take into account all of the variables that you feed into it. For instance in the mathematical software platform called Mathematica, you could feed in multiple values and try to get the computer to figure it out for you. For instance you say that 1. Judy drives 30 miles per hour; 2. She stopped to get gas for 8 minutes; 3. She went to McDonalds after going to the grocery store, so she was in line for 11 minutes; 4. The traffic was traveling at 5 miles per hour for 6 minutes after she left McDonalds, because there was a car accident.

There are many more ways, but you get the idea.