The Modeler

new words by R. M. Panoff

Tune: The Gambler

On a warm summer's evenin' in an atrium in Urbana,
I met up with a modeler; he complained the coffee's weak.
Now he just kept a starin' at the model on my laptop
'Til the boredom overtook him, and he began to speak.

He said, "Son, I've modeled life with Lotka and Volterra,
By knowin' prey an' pedator and what to visualize.
And if you don't mind my sayin', I can see you've made an error.
If you let me check my e-mail, I'll give you some advice."

So I fired up my browser and he tunneled through my router.
Then he scanned his yahoo mail, about 5 gigabytes.
And the night got deathly quiet, when he wrote down an expression.
Said, "If you're gonna model lynx and hares you've got to get it right.

	You got to know what the change is, know what the range is,
	Know when to integrate and know when to sum.
	You never count your bunnies when yer iteratin' tables.
	There'll be time enough for graphin' when the model's done.

Ev'ry modeler knows that the secret to convergin'
Is knowin' what to throw away and knowin' what to keep.
With ev'ry term you're choosin' 'tween acc'racy an' precision,
And the best that you can hope fer is a slope that's not too steep."

And when he finished speakin', he closed out all my windows,
Chugged down his coffee and faded off to sleep.
And somewhere in the lobby the modeler, he broke wind, dear,
But in his final words I found a term that I could keep.

	"You got to know what the change is, know what the range is,
	Know when to integrate and know when to sum.
	You never count your bunnies when yer iteratin' tables.
	There'll be time enough for graphin' when the model's done."