Dice and Data (see also CS in Science, Module 1)

Posted July 27, 2018 by turtle
Dice with table from wikihow.com

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Modeling the movement of agents, whether they are people, molecules, cars or ideas, is an important part of modeling systems.  Different agents will have different movement patterns and varying amount of randomness in their “walks.”  The amount of randomness in a walk can have impact on systems.

In this activity, students will learn the mathematical foundation for randomness in walks through a series of activities.  The first activity is a table top activity using dice and establishing probabilities of different outcomes.  In the second activity, this probability is linked to programming the movement of agents in a simulated world.  The final activity is to make a simple model in which the movement of the agent has impact on the state of the environment.  Data is collected from runs of the model and analyzed to measure the impact of movement types.  For details, see the Dice and Data Instructions, below.

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