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.

24.2. A tour of datasets

[status: unwritten]

24.2.1. Climate change

24.2.2. 538 blog data

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:

  • The 10-hour “serious programming” course.
  • The “Data files and first plots” mini-course in Section 2
  • Random number basics Section 7

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