A representation of some real-world system that can also take on some aspects of reality for participants and users. Key features of simulations are that they represent real-world systems, contain rules and strategies that allow flexible and variable simulation activity to evolve, and the cost of error for participants is low, protecting them from the more severe consequences of mistakes.

A game in which participants are provided with a simulated environment in which to play.

Referring to an organism, means its dimensions. There are often expressed as length, but can be expressed in mass, volume or energy.

Group of individual organisms that are capable of interbreeding to produce fertile offspring in nature. It is the largest gene pool that exists under natural conditions.

The tendency of a community to return to its original state after a disturbance or to resist such disturbance. It includes the property of resilience (the speed with which a community returns to its former state after a perturbation) and resistance (the ability of a community to avoid displacement in the first place).

Is a measure of variability; it shows how much variation or dispersion a group of observation exhibit from the mean, or from an expected value. A low standard deviation indicates that the data points tend to be very close to the mean; high standard deviation indicates that the data points are spread out over a large range of values. It is the square root of the variance.

A measure of the precision of the sample mean of the different samples obtained to estimate the population. Its value decreases as the sample size increases, as the chance of variation from the population mean is reduced. It depends on both the standard deviation and the sample size (SE = SD/√(sample size). The SE can be calculated to other statistic measures (descriptors) than the mean.

Refers to a statement on which hypothesis testing will be based. Particularly important statistical hypotheses include the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis.

A general term for the procedure of assessing whether sample data is consistent with the scientific hypothesis formulated.

Statistical procedures to determine whether there is enough evidence to "reject" or “accept” a statement or hypothesis.