Huh?
School just got really difficult all of a sudden. Actually, I should rephrase. School is rarely difficult in any regard other than the sheer volume of work. Maybe I feel this way because profe recently decided to assign us a research project on the Spanish Civil war, a parody movie of La Catrina, a proyecto cultural, and a massive 3-part final exam. Physics also started at Lewis and Clark last week. This class is going to be really fun. I think that the upper-division physics classes are vastly superior to the lower ones. There are lots of juniors and seniors, so the class is a lot more capable and insightful.
I've been working on a STELLA model of avian flu (H5N1). I spent about 3 hours at the Lewis and Clark library yesterday reading books on mathematical modelling of epidemics, and I think I have come to the conclusion that you really can only do so much with deterministic mathematical modeling. The only thing for which I can imagine it being really effective is certain economic applications, but I'm no expert in that area. I guess it works for large sample groups that can be assumed to be homogeneous, but that is rarely a reasonable assumption. There's a lot of work using so-called "stochastic" mathematical models, which I don't understand well. From what I can tell, they use Markov chains and discrete time intervals to add an element randomness to the models. Of course, I only have the vaguest notion of what this all means, and needless to say, STELLA doesn't actually have any of these capabilities. I'm also feeling drawn back to the notion of using a non-analytic simulation written in Python. It makes a lot of sense to do this to emulate the host-parasite interactions that exist in my back-burner rice model, but I think it would be appropriate in this scenario too. On the flip-side, analytic methods seem a lot more practical for my idea of modeling economic stabilization techniques in the Asian financial crisis. In that situation, the entire focus isn't on one type of discrete unit (like people or rice plants), but on broad macroeconomic indicators like GDP and capital flows. I guess the lesson is to choose methods carefully to fit the problem and to eradicate deadlines from one's life.
You've probably already read Scientific American's March 2005 article on modelling small pox (specifically Portland). But if you haven't go check it out just for curiosity's sake--as I recall, it's a very interesting description of the TRANSIMS model (pretty sure there's no mention of Python). The print version is definitely better than the online link because it has dorky but cool computerized diagrams.
[url]http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=000BBC08-CEA3-1213-8EA383414B7FFE9F[/url]
I hadn't read the article (I don't subscribe to Scientific American), but I was familiar with the MIDAS program. It's pretty ridiculously cool and obviously way more complicated (and accurate) than what I'm doing. In principle, I think their simulation approach is similar to my line of attack in my Python simulation, albeit dramatically more sophistocated.
I did lots of mathematical models using Markov chains in my 20s. It's really not that complicated. If you google "markov chains" you should be able to figure it out without much trouble.
Well, I'm not going to act like I know anything about these programs but I sure know about the sudden increase in difficutly in school. Adam, if you're feeling the heat you're lucky you didn't get into Meiner because he's back and for the first time 2 months we have to do work and it sucks. Add finals and financial aid applications a little bit of drivers ed and it sucks.
But what I really want to know Adam is what your Spanish movie is about. Chris Blake's movie looks exceptional, hows yours? Can I see it?
Our Spanish movie? Eh. It's not that great. It is also a parody of La Catrina. Other than that, it is somewhat difficult to explain, but I think that it is pretty solid, high B/very low A material. Now that I have taken a quiz that I was missing in the class, I have a very sturdy 96% though. I'm a bit of a grammar nerd, so I should fare reasonably well on the final, and all will come out well in the end.