• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
• /
• v.31 no.1
• /
• pp.15-24
• /
• 2006

In simulation input modeling, it is important to identify a probability distribution to represent the input process of interest. In this paper, an appropriate sample size is determined for parameter estimation associated with some typical probability distributions frequently encountered in simulation input modeling. For this purpose, a statistical measure is proposed to evaluate the effect of sample size on the precision as well as the accuracy related to the parameter estimation, square rooted mean square error to parameter ratio. Based on this evaluation measure, this sample size effect can be not only analyzed dimensionlessly against parameter's unit but also scaled regardless of parameter's magnitude. In the Monte Carlo simulation experiments, three continuous and one discrete probability distributions are investigated such as ; 1) exponential ; 2) gamma ; 3) normal ; and 4) poisson. The parameter's magnitudes tested are designed in order to represent distinct skewness respectively. Results show that ; 1) the evaluation measure drastically improves until the sample size approaches around 200 ; 2) up to the sample size about 400, the improvement continues but becomes ineffective ; and 3) plots of the evaluation measure have a similar plateau pattern beyond the sample size of 400. A case study with real datasets presents for verifying the experimental results.