Course Learning Objectives
Modeling begins before you ever touch a computer
- How do I understand the system of interest?
- Within that system, what phenomena am I interested in?
- What entities do I think are relevant for my model?
- How might I qualitatively describe entity relationships in the model? (Example: predators hunt prey, so predators should have some contribution to the reduction of prey.)
- What simplifications do I know I’m making?
- How can I express expectations of/predictions about the model? (E.g., with one wolf and 10 million rabbits, I don’t think there will be much of a predator effect. Or: here’s a sketch of the path I think this orbiting body might take. Or: based on my experiences with kerbal space program, I figure the object would take a path like this.)