1. Monte Carlo Simulation
Natalia A. Humphreys
April 6, 2012
University of Texas at Dallas

2. Aknowledgement
Wayne L. Winston, “Microsoft Excel Data Analysis and Business Modeling”, 2004

3. Overview Part I Part II: Simulation examples
Questions answered with the help of MCS
History
Typical simulations
Part II: Simulation examples
Part III: Advantages of MCS over deterministic analysis

4. Challenges
We are constantly faced with uncertainty, ambiguity, and variability.
Risk analysis is part of every decision we make.
We’d like to accurately predict (estimate) the probabilities of uncertain events.
Monte Carlo simulation enables us to model situations that present uncertainty and play them out thousands of times on a computer.

5. Questions answered with the help of MCS
How should a greeting card company determine how many cards to produce?
How should a car dealership determine how many cars to order?
What is the probability that a new product’s cash flows will have a positive net present value (NPV)?
What is the riskiness of an investment portfolio?

6. Modeling with MCS
Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) lets you see all the possible outcomes of your decisions and assess the impact of risk, allowing for better decision making under uncertainty.

7. MCS: Where did the Name Come From?
During the 1930s and 1940s, many computer simulations were performed to estimate the probability that the chain reaction needed for the atom bomb would work successfully.
The Monte Carlo method was coined then by the physicists John von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam and Nicholas Metropolis, while they were working on this and other nuclear weapon projects (Manhattan Project) in the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
It was named in homage to the Monte Carlo Casino, a famous casino in the Monaco resort Monte Carlo where Ulam's uncle would often gamble away his money.

8. Who Uses MCS? General Motors (GM) Procter and Gamble (P&G) Eli Lilly
Wall Street firms
Sears
Financial planners
Other companies, organizations and individuals

9. MCS Use
General Motors (GM), Procter and Gamble (P&G), and Eli Lilly use simulation to estimate both the average return and the riskiness of new products.

10. MCS Use: GM Forecast net income for the corporation
Predict structural costs and purchasing costs
Determine its susceptibility to different risks:
Interest rate changes
Exchange rate fluctuations

11. MCS Use: Lilly
Determine the optimal plant capacity that should be built for each drug

12. MCS Use: Wall Street Price complex financial derivatives
Determine the Value at Risk (VaR) of investment portfolios.
By definition, Value at Risk at security level p for a random variable X is the number VaR_p(X) such that
Pr(X<VaR_p(X))=p
In practice, p is selected to be close to 1: 95%, 99%, 99.5%

13. MCS Use: Procter & Gamble
Model and optimally hedge foreign exchange risk

14. MCS Use: Sears
How many units of each product line should be ordered from suppliers

15. MCS Use: Financial Planners
Determine optimal investment strategies for their clients’ retirement.

16. MCS Use: Others Value “real options”:
Value of an option to expand, contract, or postpone a project

17. MCS Applications Physical Sciences Engineering Computational Biology
Applied Statistics
Games
Design and visuals
Finance and business (Actuarial Science)
Telecommunications
Mathematics

18. Part II
We’ll now discuss how Monte Carlo simulation works by looking at a few simulation examples

19. =RAND() function
When you enter the formula =RAND() in a cell, you get a number that is equally likely to assume any value between 0 and 1.
Get a number less than or equal to 0.25 around 25% of the time
Get a number that is at least 0.9 around 10% of the time
What happens when I enter =RAND() in a cell?

20. Example 1: Discrete Random Variable Simulation
Demand for a calendar is governed by the following discrete r.v.:
DEMAND
PROBABILITY
10,000
0.10
20,000
0.35
40,000
0.30
60,000
.25

21. Discrete r.v. Simulation(cont.)
How can we have Excel play out, or simulate, this demand for calendars many times?
We associate each possible value of the RAND function with a possible demand for calendars.

22. Discr r.v. Sim (cont.)
The following assignment ensures that a demand of 10,000 will occur 10 percent of the time, and so on.
DEMAND
RANDOM NUMBER ASSIGNED
10,000
Less than 0.10
20,000
Greater than or equal to 0.10 and less than 0.45
40,000
Greater than or equal to 0.45 and less than 0.75
60,000
Greater than or equal to 0.75

23. Discr r.v. Sim (cont.)
Creating the following cutoff table, we then use it to look up the values “assigned” to each random number:
TRIAL
RAND
SIM DEMAND 1
60,000 2
10,000 3
20,000 4
40,000
CUTOFF
DEMAND
10,000
0.1
20,000
0.45
40,000
0.75
60,000

24. Discr r.v. Sim (cont.)
The function used to create the values in the third column of the second table is called the VLOOKUP function.
Its syntax in Excel is:
VLOOKUP( lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, range_lookup )

25. Discr r.v. Sim (cont.)
Thus, the VLOOKUP( , LOOKUP, 2, 1)=60,000
TRUE=1, FALSE=0
If VLOOKUP can't find lookup value, and range lookup is TRUE, it uses the largest value that is less than or equal to lookup value.

26. Discr r.v. Sim (cont.)
If we simulate 400 values of calendar demand and then calculate the fraction of time each demand appears in the simulation, we’ll get a table similar to the following:
DEMAND
PROBABILITY
10,000
0.10
20,000
0.35
40,000
0.30
60,000
0.25
DEMAND
FRACTION OF TIME
10,000
20,000
40,000
60,000

27. Example 2: Normal Random Variable Simulation
Suppose we want to simulate 400 trials or iterations for a normal r.v. with a mean μ=40,000 and standard deviation σ=10,000
What is a normal random variable?
Let us first define the standard normal random variable.

28. Standard Normal Random Variable
Its distribution has a form of a “bell” curve around the zero.
Standard Normal Distribution Table is a table that shows probability that a standard normal random variable Z is less than a number z:
Φ(z)=Pr(Z<z)
A standard normal r.v. Z is a r.v. with μ=0 and σ=1

29. Connection between any Normal r.v. and a Standard Normal r.v.
If Z is N(0, 1) and is Y is N(μ, σ^2), then
Y=σZ+μ

30. Normal Random Variable Simulation
Suppose we want to simulate 400 trials or iterations for a normal r.v. with a mean μ=40,000 and standard deviation σ=10,000
The formula NORMINV(RAND(), μ, σ) will generate a simulated value of a normal r.v. having a mean μand standard deviation σ.

31. Normal r.v. Sim (cont.)
TRIAL
RAND
NORMAL RV 1
33,518.16 2
36,006.98 3
54,575.82 4
33,204.76
33, = NORMINV( , 40,000, 10,000)
This value could also be looked up using the Standard Normal Distribution table.

32. Example 3: How Many Cards to Produce?
Suppose the demand for a Valentine’s Day card is governed by the following discrete r.v.:
DEMAND
PROBABILITY
10,000
0.10
20,000
0.35
40,000
0.30
60,000
.25
In this section we’ll show how Monte Carlo simulation can be used as a tool to help businesses make better decisions.

33. Cards to Produce? (cont.)
The greeting card sells for $4.00
The variable cost of producing each card is $1.50
Leftover cards will be disposed at $0.20 per card
How many cards should be printed to get the highest profit?
In this section we’ll show how Monte Carlo simulation can be used as a tool to help businesses make better decisions.

34. Cards to Produce? (cont.)
We simulate each possible production quantity (10,000, 20,000, 40,000 or 60000) many times (e.g. 1,000 iterations)
Then we determine which order quantity yields the maximum average profit over the 1,000 iterations
In this section we’ll show how Monte Carlo simulation can be used as a tool to help businesses make better decisions.

35. Cards to Produce? (cont.)1
produced
10,000 2
rand 3
demandcard
20,000 4
unit prod cost
$1.50 5
unit price
$4.00 6
unit disp cost
$0.20 7
revenue
$40,000.00 8
total var cost
$15,000.00 9
total disposing cost $- 10
profit
$25,000.00
In this section we’ll show how Monte Carlo simulation can be used as a tool to help businesses make better decisions.

36. Cards to Produce? (cont.)
Our sales and cost parameters are in 4, 5, and 6
Enter a trial production quantity in 1
Create a random number in 2 with =RAND()
Simulate demand for the card in 3 with VLOOKUP(rand, lookup, 2)
The number of unites sold is
MIN (Production Quantity, Demand)
In this section we’ll show how Monte Carlo simulation can be used as a tool to help businesses make better decisions.

37. Cards to Produce? (cont.)
Revenue in 7: MIN (Produced, Demand)*unit price
Total production cost in 8: produced*unit production cost
If we produce more cards than are demanded, the number of units left over equals production minus demand
In this section we’ll show how Monte Carlo simulation can be used as a tool to help businesses make better decisions.

38. Cards to Produce? (cont.)
Disposal cost in 9:
unit disposal cost*MAX(produced-demand, 0)
Total profit in 10:
Revenue – total var cost – total disposing cost

39. Cards to Produce? (cont.)
We would like an efficient way to calculate profit for each production quantity
We’ll use a two-way data table
mean (ave profit)
24,985
45,984
57,311
44,218
st dev (risk) -
12,321.19
48,346.89
73,622.44
25,000
10,000
20,000
40,000
60,000 1
25000
50000
16000
-60000 2
100000
66000 3 4
150000 5
-18000

40. Cards to Produce? (cont.)
Enter on the left corresponding to our 1,000 trials
Enter possible production quantities (third row)
We want to calculate profit for each trial number and each production quantity
Refer to the formula for profit in the upper left cell of our data table by entering =B11
We are now ready to trick Excel into simulating 1,000 iterations of demand for each production quantity.

41. Cards to Produce? (cont.)
Select the table range and then click Table on the Data menu.
Click on any blank cell (e.g. I14) as the column input cell and choose production quantity (cell B1) as the row input cell.
We calculate the average simulated profit for each production quantity
We calculate the standard deviation of simulated profits for each production quantity

42. Cards to Produce? Conclusion
Producing 40,000 cards always yields the largest expected profit
However, it also appear to have a large standard deviation (risk)

43. The Impact of Risk in Our Decision
Producing 20,000 cards instead of 40,000, the expected profits drop by about 22%, but the risk drops almost 73%.
Therefore, if we are extremely risk averse, producing 20,000 cards might be the right decision.
Note that producing 10,000 cards always has a std.dev. of zero cards because if we produce 10,000 cards we will always sell all of them and have none left over.

44. Confidence Interval for Mean Profit
Into what interval are we 95% sure the true mean will fall?
This interval is called the 95% confidence interval for mean profit.
It’s computed by the following formula:
Mean Profit ±(1.96*profit std.dev.)/√(number iterations)
In our example: (53, , )

45. Problems
A GMC dealer believes that demand for 2005 Envoys will normally be distributed with a mean of 200 and standard deviation of 30. His cost of receiving an Envoy is $25,000, and he sells an Envoy for $40, Half of all leftover Envoys can be sold for $30, His is considering ordering 200, 220, 240, 260, 280, and 300 Envoys. How many should he order?

46. Problems (cont.)
A small supermarket is trying to determine how many copies of Newsweek magazine they should order each week. They believe their demand for Newsweek is governed by the following discrete random variable
DEMAND
PROBABILITY 15
0.10 20
0.20 25
0.30 30
0.25 35
0.15

47. Problems (cont.)
The supermarket pays $1.00 for each copy of Newsweek and sells each copy for $ They can return each unsold copy of Newsweek for $ How many copies of Newsweek should the store order to maximize its profit?

48. Part III: Advantages of MCS
In conclusion, we’ll discuss some advantages of MCS over deterministic, or “single-point estimate” analysis.

49. Advantages of MCS
MCS provides a number of advantages over deterministic, or “single-point estimate” analysis:
Probabilistic Results
Graphical Results
Sensitivity Analysis
Scenario Analysis
Correlation of Inputs

50. Probabilistic Results
Results show not only what could happen, but how likely each outcome is.

51. Graphical Results
Because of the data a Monte Carlo simulation generates, it’s easy to create graphs of different outcomes and their chances of occurrence. 
This is important for communicating findings to other stakeholders.

52. Sensitivity Analysis
With just a few cases, deterministic analysis makes it difficult to see which variables impact the outcome the most. 
In Monte Carlo simulation, it’s easy to see which inputs had the biggest effect on bottom-line results.

53. Scenario Analysis
In deterministic models, it’s very difficult to model different combinations of values for different inputs to see the effects of truly different scenarios. 
Using Monte Carlo simulation, analysts can see exactly which inputs had which values together when certain outcomes occurred. 
This is invaluable for pursuing further analysis.

54. Correlation of Inputs
In Monte Carlo simulation, it’s possible to model interdependent relationships between input variables.
  It’s important for accuracy to represent how, in reality, when some factors go up, others go up or down accordingly.

55. References
Wayne L. Winston, “Microsoft Excel Data Analysis and Business Modeling”, help/introduction-to-monte-carlo-simulation- HA aspx
Monte Carlo Simulation on.asp