An investigation of the effect of educational background on performance in simulation studies

We might expect a link between educational background, in terms of degree subject studied, and performance on simulation studies. We study this link by comparing the performance of student groups from computer science, statistics and business on a simulation task. The analysis covers their overall performance and their performance on different elements of the task. Surprisingly, we are unable to find much difference in the performance of the students, leading us to conclude that educational background has little effect, at least for a relatively straightforward modelling task. The implications for organisations employing simulation modellers and for their educational needs are discussed.