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modeling 2013
Shodor > SUCCEED > Workshops > Archive > modeling 2013

Levi taught the workshop today. He started the morning off with a review from Monday consisting of the scientific method and the models from yesterday. Next, they went to the Rabbits and Wolves model in Interactivate. From this model, Levi wanted the class to come up with a story of events. As the students said what happened, he wrote it on the board and they wrote it in their notebooks. The focus of today was if/then statements. This topic was picked so that the students will understand if/then statements when they build their own models at the end of the week. To make sure the students understood the concept of if/then statements, Levi said general if-statements and pointed to different students to complete them with their own then-statements. For example, Levi said "if it is raining " then pointed to a student and they said, "then I will bring an umbrella".

He used this as an introduction to say that AgentSheets is basically just a big program of if/then statements. Next, they pulled up the Disease Model in Interactivate to cover if/then/else statements. After this, they opened Excel and used if/then statements to simulate a coin flip. In the cells they used Excel's if/then function and after typing the equation, either "heads" or "tails" appeared in the cell. The class furthered this model by making more flips, creating a count of the results and the percentage of times they happened. The next Excel page they created simulated the roll of a die. The last page they made was based off of the hermit crab model in Interactivate. Levi first did a quick review of average then talked about "the average of our neighbors". This page they made was a representation of diffusion. The last applet that was opened was the Simple Sick model. The students cleared the background and created their own background to run the model on.