2012 Joint Meeting mini course forum

Posted by tlofaro at January 18. 2012

Thanks to all who participated in the "Modeling" mini course at the 2012 Joint Meetings in Boston. I've set up this topic so that we might continue the conversation we started there.

I've attached the LaTeX version of the notes I took during our zombie exercise. Feel free to download this and make whatever changes you wish.

Thanks again to all those involved.

Attachments

maa-sc-zombies-tex (1.4 kB)

Re: 2012 Joint Meeting mini course forum

Posted by tlofaro at January 18. 2012

Dan Flath recorded many of the questions that came up during our discussions. I post them here to continue these discussions as well. Feel free to start a new discussion topic on one or more of these if that seems appropriate.

1. How to strike the balance between understanding and solving DEs.

2. How to teach students to recognize a potential model (for example, in a newspaper article) and then to develop it. Building vs using models.

3. How to include models starting with data.

4. How to effectively teach writing and communicating in the context of models.

5. Models as motivation.

6. Wide variety of topics were mentioned: physical science, biology, social science, for policy. Which work best?

7. Shorter vs longer projects. How many of each?

8. What about projects suitable for the weakest students?

9. How to make grading easy or even manageable when there is a lot of modeling.

10. How to change department culture, persuade skeptical colleagues to give modeling a try.

11. Numerical solving vs algebraic solving - how much of each?

Re: 2012 Joint Meeting mini course forum

Posted by Mike Huber at January 18. 2012

Earlier this week,an article appeared in the New York Times online. here is the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/books/zombie-poetry-takes-on-a-life-of-its-own.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=zombie&st=cse.

The article also has a link to the CDC, which uses a comic book to promote preparedness for a mass outbreak of disease. Check it out! I plan to use the zombie problem as a pre-cursor to modeling another infection outbreak, perhaps avian flu or a new strain of SARS.

In any event, support by the CDC should show students that this is a worthwhile project.