[bscphil]

I think the great advantage of "simulation", for the programming-literate, is not that you can simulate your way to a correct answer, but that the process of creating a simulation is likely to show you the error in your reasoning.

As a young teenager, I encountered the Monty Hall problem for the first time, and I didn't believe that the "analytical" answer was correct. I decided to simulate it by programming. In the 20 minutes it took me to write a simulation, I went from complete incomprehension to a full understanding of why I got the results I got. Programming a simulation of the problem forces you to write out the algorithmic significance of "Monty reveals one of the goats".