24. Appendix: Proposed chapters¶
24.1. Motivation, prerequisites, plan¶
This appendix is a grabbag of possible chapters – ideas for topics that are interesting, especially to middle and high school students, and which are waiting for someone to write a chapter about them.
It is structured as a simple list of sections with a chapter topic in each. Each section has some references on materials.
Once a co-author wants to write a chapter on that subject, she should transfer that material into a chapter, flesh out the chapter (see Section 23), and remove it from this appendix.
24.3. Special numbers: pi¶
[status: unwritten]
24.3.1. Motivation, prerequisites, plan¶
Purpose: a recreational way of calculating pi using random numbers. This brings out various features of probability and statistics.
Prerequisites:
24.4. Predator-prey modeling¶
Areas: biology, ecology
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYq2078_xqc - Khan Academy video with pleasant intro to cycles and real examples, 5min.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFDiiSqGB7M - crash course on predator-prey ecology
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equations#A_simple_example
- http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Predator-prey_model
- http://mc-stan.org/users/documentation/case-studies/lotka-volterra-predator-prey.html
Still have to look at articles on 3-way predator-prey:
- http://emis.ams.org/journals/HOA/JAMDS/3/2155.pdf
- chrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/https://www.cs.unm.edu/~forrest/classes/cs365/lectures/Lotka-Volterra.pdf
- http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.360.1552&rep=rep1&type=pdf
- http://disi.unal.edu.co/~gjhernandezp/sim/lectures/DeterministicModelsAndChaos/PopulationModels/LotkaVolterra3species.pdf
And how about simple models of a full society collapse?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed
- http://necsi.edu/projects/evolution/co-evolution/pred-prey/co-evolution_predator.html
- https://www.ted.com/talks/jared_diamond_on_why_societies_collapse
- https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.0068
- https://faustusnotes.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/mathematical-modeling-of-civilization-collapse/
Cliometrics
24.5. Artificial life¶
Areas: biology, ecology, complex systems
24.6. Genetic algorithms¶
Othello
Robbie the Robot (from Melanie Mitchell’s book)
you’ll get to Melanie Mitchell’s mooc when you get to chapter 4 on emergent behavior it will point you here:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF0b3ThojznRyDQlitfUTzXEXwLNNE-mIand for that section of my book the prerequisite is to watch section 6.3 of the mooc:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVSseAnEzxs&index=85&list=PLF0b3ThojznRyDQlitfUTzXEXwLNNE-mIwatching the full MOOC and the section on Robbie the Robot should be done at home since it goes somewhat afield of what we are doing at work