Ednan Ochieng
Oct.14th - Orientation
Today I became well acquainted with the office. I missed the original orientation day because I had a to take an ACT exam provided to me by the Emily K Center. Aaron got me up to speed with requirements and expectations.
Oct. 15th - How do you know / Office Ethics
Today class started off with Dr.Panoff teaching us how to make connections while learning. He gave an example by learning everyone's name in the class. With everyone's name, he would tie it to something else like where in the room the person sat or who they sat around. He then talked about how to connect learning to the vocabulary words necessary and sufficient. Dr.Panoff had us look up the mass of the mars and browse different websites, many of them have vastly different numbers even NASA had conflicting estimates. It is important that everyone verifies information and to accept when one is wrong. After that, we discussed what to wear and how to act at Shodor. Mr.Ron Broadnax gave a presentation to show us proper behavior. He first came in with some tacky clothes to emphasize his point. Later he had less distracting attire. The main point being that Shodor expects us to dress properly while giving our group project presentations.
Oct. 22nd - Intro to Computational Thinking
How to use excel for getting data for random things. For our classwork, we made a spreadsheet that would randomly flip a coin. The coin would either land heads or tails and the excel model would record a number of occurrences of both heads and tails and make them into percentages. We could copy and paste our own functions onto other brackets to run the function multiple times at once. When comparing the percentages of the results of fewer coin tosses to many coin tosses, the more coin tosses the closer to the two percentages were to 50 50. This is because: the sample size of data undermining the effect of outliers, the chance of any run of a program to be output only one side of the coin is 1/n to the power of n, whereas n is the number of coin tosses, that there is only one case where all the outputs would be the same and n cases where all but one output is the same and n squared cases where all the outputs but two are the same and so on and so forth.
Oct. 29nd - Extra Work Day
I forgot that the apprenticeship program is only three weeks a month and came in the office today. I had free time so I decided to tie up some loose ends. I was able to catch up on some late assignments and things I miss from my ACT class I have. I made strides on my Shodor website project. I was the only apprentice in the office. There were no distractions and I had a laser focus. I was also able to call on Aaron to help me if I had gotten stuck on a problem.
Nov. 5th - Modeling Excel
We went over some basic programming concepts. Some of which I was currently learning in my AP Computer Science class. I wrote down quite a lot of vocabulary Here are some that were new to me and I found interesting.
Nov. 12th - Modeling Vensim
We started class with Have = Had + Change and reviewed the homework of finding things that fit that rule. For that assignment, I immediately thought of immigration. The population you have is equal to the population you had to plus that of immigration ( or subtract the amount of emigration) of people. We went over the engineering cycle and its many interpretations.Expectation, Observation, Reflection. Preview, View, Review. The main point is that an engineering always seeks to improve, whether it be a product or a theory. We started to learn how to make models in Vensim. Vensim was different from Excel in that it could not do multiple iterations of the same function at a time but it could display graphs and charts of data rather than just numbers. Dr.Panoff said something that really sparked my interest, he said "Fast computers do not do the work they do not have to. The take shortcuts."
Nov. 19th - Modeling Agent Cubes
We modeled on Agent Cube today. Before we started we went over some terms that we would need.
Dr.Panoff explained that a model tells a story. You should be able to replace the nouns with agents, the adjective with shapes, attributes, verbs with actions, and adverbs with rates.When doing loops with multiple outcomes and actions, declare the more specific actions and outcomes first, then the more general later. We learned to model in agent cube by making a SIR model or susceptible, infected, and a recovery model. The model told the story of sick people infecting susceptible healthy people then the sick becoming well after a few time steps and becoming unsusceptible. One thing that he mentioned but I did not understand and interested in is Coupled first-order differential equations. I had to leave early for my ACT preparation course.
Dec. 3rd - Group Project Day One
Today we were given the prompt for the partner project and chose partners. I chose the person next to me, Gustavo, who just so happens to be in the same program I am in at the Emily K Center. The prompt was for us to make a have= had + change model in both Vensim and agent cube about a system with changeable variables. I came up with the idea to do the Human Demographic Transition model. I was a theory I had recently reviewed in my AP Environmental class and originally learned in my AP Human Geography class. I thought it would be interesting to present an informative of the real world. Gustavo and I first did planning by formalizing what would be the variables, functions, and intended behavior of the two models. We made a list of variables and graphs we would use in Vensim and by making flow charts for the agent cube model. After we got approval from Aaron to proceed with our project, Gustavo and I started on our project and made big progress with the time we had thanks to the interns' guidance.
Dec. 10th - Group Project
I was absent today, I took the ACT. Gustavo had gotten far with his Agent Cube model so I am working on the Vensim model at home.
Dec. 17th - Group Project and Presentation
Due to some icy roads, the program had a two-hour delay but came early to troubleshoot some problems that I was having with the graphs in my Vensim model. Jim the intern was there to help, he explained the parts of Vensim I didn't understand. Gustavo and I finished our model of human population growth. I am soo happy to see that we can do great things with a program that I thought at times was too complicated. Gustavo and I were not able to present today because of delay. I think that making models of urban development would is interesting and models that help educate others by visualizing events are fun to work on and complete.
Feb. 4th 17
We learned about coding in JavaScript, and I worked on a predator-prey project in Atom. We looked at an example of a predator-prey model online. Obstruction is when a server will encrypt information to protect the local directory from plagiarism.
Feb. 11th 17
Today we learned how to change a model over from the Atom application to a website and also how to duplicate my success in a windows computer. I am happy that today I got through I did most of the things without it crashing. I am proud that I was able to help Gustavo with figuring an error problem. Aaron helped me with one of my errors.
Feb. 18th 17
We learned about manipulating code in Atom to change to behavior on an HTML model. I am getting better at fixing errors on my own and I am more interested in how to do these things on other applications. Aaron really explained the code in a comprehensive way. I collaborated with Gustavo, he needed help with getting all the lines of code to show only their top line and I asked him questions about the lesson
Mar. 4th 17
Today we change the pre-existing HTML code to make a model of my own. I partnered up with Micheal and we were the first to implement fire into our model effectively. We also got the trees to act more like their own individual agents rather than as a world agent. We decided to our forest Fire model on forest density and size. Caroline helped Micheal and me with formatting the graphs. Aaron helped with correctly setting the agents actions. Micheal needed help with setting the initial fire to one.
Mar. 11th 17
While researching for our model, I came to the conclusion that some information may not be available for the reason being that those who are in a position and would be able to collect it decide it is not pertinent to their profession. My partner and I re-wrote our description for our project so it would make it more comprehensive. If it is possible to add wind into the equation of forest fires. Aaron helped me with getting past the Keychain pop-up tabs that come up on Mac I helped Michael with the text in our description and I was not able to contribute much to our project today because my computer was running slow.
Mar. 18th 17
Today, Michael and I presented our model. I came a little late because I had a track meet in the morning. I learned about how to improve my model. Looking at what other groups implemented on their models gave me some ideas of how to improve mine. During the presentation, I think I was relatively well spoken and I answered the question I could. There were some I was unsure of and maybe could have known the answers if I had time to look over the model before presenting. It was brought up that the graph on my model was not helpful. It would not teach the user anything they could not see on the model. I would like to learn what is considered a good graph. Michael helped me with our presentation. Mobean asked questions that made me think.
Apr. 1st 17
Today we started our unit on parallel computing. What made me the most excited was how parallel computation can do a task in less time or produce more in the same amount of time. I heard that we will next investigate how people apply commuting to different careers. I am interested in how computing can be to a broad array of fields. Aaron helped me with adding a link to my portfolio through TextWrangler. We also started our Computing Notebook today. I helped Deevea with getting her computer started. I was not able to help much because everyone around me had to go to another computer.
Apr. 8th 17
Today we finished our parallel computing notebook. We looked at a Little Fe, an organization of small, and easily portable computers that are made of simple materials for education. We also learned about supercomputers measure power by running a series of complicated math equations and see how long it takes for it to solve the problems, the fastest being Sunway TaihuLight in China.Blue waters is a supercomputer that refuses to be listed because the makers believe the computers should not be measured on how many math problems it can do but how useful it is. We also researched ways that supercomputing can be used in the career fields that we want to go in. For aerospace engineering especially with computing fluid dynamics and, even NASA has an advanced supercomputing division. At the end of class, we were lucky enough to see Aaron code on the BlueWaters demo.
Apr. 22th 17
After looking at the different parts of the Little Fe from last class, we were given our final assignment, make our own computer with a 3,000$ dollar budget. It was easier said than done. It was confusing to me because all the parts complex with attributes I did not know of. Every purchase I made, I was unsure of because I did not know if price correlated with quality. The names of the product were meant to convey information about the item but as a novice, all the letters and numbers went over my head.