Impediments to Composability in Low-precision Simulations

Composability is a highly valued property in virtually all branches of science and technology. It is a prerequisite for most, if not all kinds of simulation. In this paper, I contend that various problems and limitations of qualitative simulation can be attributed to a breakdown of composability in the face of low precision data on high precision variables. Furthermore, I shall point out the relationship between such problems in model-based qualitative reasoning and a number of problems in non-monotonic reasoning.