How can the results of computer modeling be used most effectively to serve the public policy decision-making process? In considering that question, I find it useful to keep two factors very clearly in mind:

First, simulation models never provide any final answers; they simply offer an accurate, rapid, and mathematically precise means of analyzing a number of complex variables and tracing their dynamic interactions over time.

Second, the use of computer modeling therefore presupposes—even demands—an ultimate higher level of decision —political, medical, or what have you—among the policy alternatives analyzed and compared in the model.