Blog Page 2

Reflections

  • Dec. 3

    Today we learned about our group project. I partnered with Sachin to create a model of a duck population. I worked on the agent model and created ducklings that grow into ducks that have ducklings and die. I plan to add bread that randomly appears through the world and keeps the ducks alive, along with alligators that eat the ducks, similar to a rabbit and wolves model. I didn't work on the Vensim system model, but my partner Sachin did.

  • Dec. 10

    Today, we finished our projects. I finished the Agent Cubes model while my partner, Sachin, worked on the System Model. My agent model involves ducks growing up and eating bread which is randomly created in the world. I also added a house that creates ducks when the duck level is too low, allowing for the levels of ducks to not be too low. I also created a limiter to prevent ducks from overpopulating. The limit is a alligator agent that consumes ducks and prevents the level of ducks to go too high. I haven't finished everything though, and I have to finish my website next week.

  • Dec. 17

    Today we put the finishing touches on our projects. I helped Sachin finish the Vensim Model, while I started our website. I plan to work on the website over the break. I also have to change the website I am writing the blogs on, because it does not fit the template. Our Vensim project didn't work before , with the numbers rising much too quickly. However, with the help of Jim, we were able to make our vensim graph very nice. We weren't able to finish today, however, becuase we started late today due to icy road conditions.

  • Jan.14

    Today, I finished the website hosting my project. We presented our projects today. I forgot to wear business-casual attire today, and our presentation did not go very well, as we did not practice or write a script at all. Afterwards, Dr. Panoff told us all about points we could improve on, such as limiting our projects to two objects as it is near impossible to predict the movement of three bodies. Next time, I think I would give more focus to the presentation than the project itself.

  • Feb. 4

    Today we were introduced to Javascript Programming. We were shown how to use Atom, an advaced Text editor. We went over several new concepts, such as Version control, comments, liraries, pair programming, keywords, and many others. We worked on changing a predator-prey model into a diesease transmission model. We went through the javascript files and changed the variable names to match, using tools native to Atom.

  • Feb. 11

    Today we worked more on changing a Predator-prey model into a disease model. Aaron walked us through changing each of the variable names and text to match our new model. In doing so, we learned the basics of several data types and how they affect each other. For example, we learned the difference between addition and concatenation. I have not done any javascript programming since the summer, so this exercise as a very helpful review. I also learned a lot of new concepts today. We were taught the basics of objects, a topic I'm sure we will go into more detail later.

  • Feb. 18 2017

    Today we finished our Diesease model. Previously, we focused on changing variable names and attributes, but today we changed the function of the code. We went through and removed pieces we no longer need, along with moving sections to elsewhere in the code. We were able to change the eating and removing of agents into the changing of agent types.

  • March 4

    Today we started our Project, which was to change a disease model into a forest-fire model. I partnered with Skylar to work on this project. We started by changing all the names of the variables and functions to match our goal, and removing unneeded functions from each timestep.

  • March 11

    I was not here today because I was on vacation for spring break. I made up this day by working with Skylar on an offday. We filled the entire board with healthy trees, with one burning tree in the mix. We decided to change the infect function into a burn function. We simply removed the part where sick trees die off, and so the burning tree stays that way. However, we had an issue where the burning trees will only burn one tree to the right of the burning clump, and remove a random tree from the board.

  • March 18

    I was not here today because I was on vacation for spring break, and I made up this day by coming in with Skylar on an offday. We worked closely with Aaron to solve the bug previously described. It turns out that the reason was that the array that held all the agents did not match the array that held all the cells. We fixed the bug, and added a random element. Later, at home, I added a burnt tree constructor and had burning trees burn down after a timestep.

  • April 1 2017

    Today we learned the basics of parallel computing through several computational ideas. We were given a google doc with several models liked to it that helped our understanding of parallelism. I had already taken a parallel computing workshop, so a lot of the information was review. We learned that the goal of parallel computation is to improve by making it sooner, more, or better. We also learned how parallel programming may not be the most efficient solution, as the computers still have to communicate with each other.

  • April 8th

    Today we finished the parallel computing notebook and went over the concepts. We learned about some big super computers created in the past and the measurements used to rank supercomputers. We also learned about the not-so-super supercomputers under $3000. We finished up the day by leraning some basic Linux command line commands. I had already learned these over the summer but it was a good review.

    • April 22nd

    Today we learned about parallel computing by creating the VM with BCCD. We linked several computers together into a cluster and ran several programs in parallel. We learned about cores and how they are used for solving individual pieces of a problem. We finished by running some other programs such as Disease and Conway's game of life.