Today, we finalized our models and our websites, and prepared to show the class what we had worked on over the last three weeks. Finally, after lunch, it was time to present the project, which we had prepared for earlier in the day with index cards to touch on key points we wished to talk about and approximately how long we should focus on each point. I think our project went quite smoothly, as we were able to touch on all the major points of our project. Something interesting we noticed was the wide variety of projects in the presentations; many of the project were not actually based off of the basic two designs we had as a starting point - one of the most interesting agent models in particular was the portrayal of money in circulation on a world without actual agent interactions. I'm looking forward to having a meeting with my mentor (Dr. Panoff) and discussing the stipend and future projects. While I was editing this one blog, Aaron and Ernie again showed why they are the best as they helped me fix an issue in the scaling of the navigation bar. I hope everyone has a good winter break and I'm looking forward to coming back here in February. I'm also looking forward to continuing to read the excellent book "Molecular Biology of the Cell" by Bruce Alberts over the winter break.
Today, we continued to work on our major project, and worked on primarily wrapping up our models and setting up the website for the project. Initially, we based our website off of Ernie's template, but made some changes including moving the navigation bar to a dropdown menu on the left side, and changed images/pages/descriptions in the website's pages. We learned how hard it was often to get the css to correctly align the text boxes. Afterwards, we decided to work on tweaking the AgentCubes model to add natural deaths, especially because the lack of natural deaths created explosions of agents which were able to break the system. All of these problems took quite long to troubleshoot, but Aaron and Ernie helped us out with fixing them; they really are the best. Furthermore, I finally completed my HTML project from a bit ago, which I had not finished. Initially, my website was somewhat complete, but had numerous bugs which Ernie notified me about and helped me fix. The various issues in my HTML program should now be resolved and I hope to continue working on this, among other programs, next week.
Today, we began working on our first major project: the large modeling project which Ramsey and I are making to model a photosynthetic ecosystem featuring a full food chain of organisms ranging from microscopic phytoplankton and zooplankton to sharks and tuna. Something really interesting I noticed was how sensitive some populations, such as the zoo/phyto-plankton, were to changes in their birth/death fraction, quickly resulting in errors when I raised the birth fraction. On our agent model, Ramsey and I also learned many things about the agent model, such as how hard it was to model organisms which were more present within the world, rather than separate (example: phyto/zoo plankton) and also how to deal with issues with various hill-climbing algorithms. There were many issues with the program, but I felt as if I learned new life lessons dealing with the different bugs present in both models. I'm looking forward to continuing this program next week.
Today, we learned about agent modeling, and its inherent differences f1rom system modeling. Afterwards, we began to work on the AgentCubes Online program to implement visual agent models to represent the SIR model of disease infection. From this mini-project, I was able to get acquainted with AgentCubesOnline, a program which I hadn't worked with for a while. Furthermore, we also learned to expand our usage of Vensim, and how to make even more complex models dealing with expansions of already "somewhat correct" models to make them "more correct" - this reflects the rule which we learned, which was "Right=Wrong+corrections." For example, in our modeling project, we started out with a base of Susceptible-Infected-Recovered, but we learned how to expand it to Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered-Dead, and etc. The different uses of models and how programs like AgentCubes, which are made for games, really interest me and I can't wait to start my project next week with SSP buddy Ramsey.
Today, while I was in Elon, the learning. I continued to work on more extensions of System Dynamics models, such as the Durham population model. I'm not completely done with all of these mini-projects, but I definitely plan on finishing them as soon as possible to hopefully get feedback on my work. I've been pretty busy but I think that the work and the models will be complete soon
Today, we learned an introduction to system dynamics, and how different softwares could be manipulated to implement the basic equation "Have=Had+Change." Initially, we started out with a basic program like Microsoft Excel and used both the Developer Tools (Things I never knew existed before) to create basic models, such as coin flips and . As detailed by Dr. Panoff, there are so many possibilities for using a "spreadsheets program" like Excel and expanding them to meet the needs of modeling projects in all fields of science, economics, etc. Evidently, other, more advanced students whom Dr. Panoff presented to also were unaware of a lot of these features, so I. Afterwards, we were introduced to the program Vensim, which can take basic
We learned about the basic tenets of numerics, and the different components of numerals which make them. I never knew a lot of these features, despite having learned both computer science and mathematics for many years, and I believe that the lessons learned at this program are really valuable for me going forward and learning more math and science. There were also lessons learned about different methods of shortening numbers and their various shortcomings, as well as how to overcome those shortcomings. I'm looking forward to next week's meeting! Aaron and Ernie are the best!
Today was my first SHODOR Apprenticeship lesson and it was a blast! Ranging from Ron's embarrassment of Zach to Dr. Panoff's Card tricks, we did a whole ton of activities to both get acquainted with the social norms of the office space. I really enjoyed the more involved mathematics and the different projects and principles of math, such as deterministic algorithms and "forces". Lastly, the "How Do You Know" exercises helped give me a refresher on a lot of the important tenets of research which I had learned in the SSP. I'm looking forward to next week's meeting!
Ok, the date on here is kinda deceiving because I didn't actually go to the meeting/lesson, but I still, I thought that watching the videos and going to the . Aaron is honestly the best for helping me with all of the catch-up stuff, and I'm ready to do the homework and begin my apprenticeship! I got a tour of the lab, and saw the extremely expansive library. I hope I can eventually check out books from the library!