July 14, 1999
Today class began in the morning with the stundents visiting the AIDA webpage. The class went through the model together in the morning a couple of times. The object of the model was to keep the glucose level in the patient within certain bounds. The students had to do this by varying when the patient ate, when she took insulin and the doseage.
In the afternoon the students were introduced to STELLA®, the modeling tool they would be using extensively for the remainder of the session. To begin, the students were taught a begginer level model that demonstrated simple population dynamics. Once the students could maneuver around the program they got to work on their own model. The assignment was also a population dynamics model, but this time it explored predetor-prey relations. The scenario was a secluded island that held lynx and hare, on the island lynx only ate hare, the object was to model how each population would change in time as the lynx ate the hare.