BIOL398-01/S11:Class Journal Week 13

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What aspect of this assignment came most easily to you?
What aspect of this assignment was the most challenging for you?
What (yet) do you not understand?
Are there any aspects of the model structure with which you don't feel comfortable? Explain.

Sarah Carratt 01:44, 19 April 2011 (EDT)

It was easy to prepare the excel sheet and work with the program once I downloaded the correct version and realized the program needed the genes to be written in a specific way.
The hardest part of this assignment was not throwing the computer against the wall when I realized the errors produced by both mine and Nick's programs were due to a single letter.
So far, I think I understand this assignment but I am nervous to interpret the data.
When it comes time to present this information, I don't feel comfortable explaining the outputs the program gave me.

The easiest part of this assignment was setting up the input file, eventhough I kept making small careless mistakes.
It was challenging trying to find and understand the error with MATLAB, and trying to understand how sensitive the program was.
I kind of don't understand what the output with MATLAB is telling us about our data.
I don't feel confortable trying to interpret the output just yet.

--Carmen E. Castaneda 02:50, 19 April 2011 (EDT)

Editing the matlab code to run with my created excel sheet came most easily to me.
Figuring out what's going on was the most difficult for me. I feel like I missed a lot last Thursday.
I don't yet understand what's going on in the MatLab scripts we were given.
I don't really understand the basic model, or the goals of the basic model.

James C. Clements 00:59, 19 April 2011 (EDT)

The aspect that came most easily to me for this assignment was going through the excel sheet and setting everything up.
The aspect that was most challenging was figuring out that my matlab wasn't working because I was missing a single s.
I do not understand a lot of the math behind these steps still, but I attribute that to reading the papers out of order. I am going to go back and reread them so I understand.
The only aspects of the model that I don't feel comfortable with are setting everything up in matlab.

Nicholas A. Rohacz 01:44, 19 April 2011 (EDT)

The part that came most easily to me was making the excel sheet.
The aspect that was the most challenging was working with Matlab. I did not understand the error messages that kept coming up with the code, specially because I thought I had done every step right.
I feel at this point that I understand everything. I mean I am still struggling to find the biological meaning of why certian genes are important, but other than that ecerything is clear.
I feel confortable with all the values and expressions that we are using. I feel that since I understand the differential equation being used, I understand what parts of the model we need and why we need to estimate some, while others are retrieved from the literature. Also, I feel that I understanding what everything means and how it comes into play in the model is important to understand. This is the one time where I can see the big picture.

Alondra Vega 20:46, 17 April 2011 (EDT)