Application	Characteristics
Estimation of Type 1 error, sensitivity, specificity, or statistical power	Application of statistical methods on multiple replicates of simulated data sets to quantify success rate of detecting signals (or no signal) in the data sets
Validation of correctness or robustness of models	Application of statistical methods on data sets simulated according to or deviate from specific model assumptions
Statistical inference	Simulations of data with varying parameters and the identification of simulations (and therefore parameters) that best match empirical data
Comparison of performance of statistical methods	Application of multiple statistical methods on the same set of simulated data sets for the purposes of comparing results
Exploratory simulations	Exploration of results from simulations with varying parameters to observe possible outcomes associated with a parameter space