From jacobson@math-cs.cns.uni.edu Wed Dec 5 17:22:44 2007 Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 17:22:44 -0600 (CST) From: Mark Jacobson To: 810-022-01-fall@uni.edu Subject: Re: Birthday Assignment ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 17:07:59 -0600 (CST) From: Mark Jacobson To: Brett Favre Subject: Re: Birthday Assignment On Wed, 5 Dec 2007, Brett Favre wrote: > Professor Jacobson, I have a couple of questions about the birthday > assignment. When is it due? Hello Brett, By the end of finals week, if you need the extra time. You might have done a major amount of work on it by now, as it was assigned a few weeks before Thanksgiving. I will assume you have a very good understanding of everything related to it when I write the final exam. So do NOT ignore it until after our final! --- The techniques and concepts and Excel/VBA macro code for doing the birthday assignment have been done in lab and in the classroom many times in the last few weeks, and some of the specific things have been done in Wednesday hands-on classes clear back in October and September. BE SURE YOU STUDY AND REVIEW ALL RELATED NOTES AND HANDOUTS, especially Prerequisite #1 and Prerequisite #2. ---------- The assumption will be that you have a deep understanding of the birthday problem final project BEFORE the Monday afternoon final exam. So, if you have studied the #1 and #2 prerequisites, and the new #3 supplement (today's free throws handout example), you will have a great grasp of Visual Basic for Applications basics in the context of the birthday problem. > Also, in the specifications of it you have down that we are suppose to let > the user of our macro choose how many > simulations to run. Should we have separate buttons to run it once, run it > multiple times, and to run a series? Yes, yes and yes. Yes. Remember, one of the prerequisites stated on the Excel final birthday program handout is the following: ------------------------------------ #1 The online birthday's macro published PowerPoint presentation. You need to study and understand this. Keep in mind that some of the slides have speaker notes. What do you see when you look at slide number #7? Two buttons. Run Birthday Simulation Run 100 Simulations What does this mean? 1. You still will have a button to run it once. 2. You have a button to run it however many times, such as 50, 100, 500, 40, 1000 times, etc. As stated on the handout, you can have a CELL that contains the number of runs. So your 2nd button would read Run n times or Run specified number of times or Run multiple times. That button can be near the Number of runs cell, which the user would have the 50 or 100 or 500 or 1000 or 2500 or 5000 or whatever value entered in. number of runs n <----- Cell D1, for example 500 <----- Cell D2, " " --------------- | RUN n Times | <---- the Forms BUTTON --------------- connected to the macro that will repeat the birthday simulation n (500) times. In other words, you will NOT have button to RUN 100 Times, but will instead have a button to RUN ANY # of times, to RUN n Times... 3. You have a button to run the SERIES of simulations, as clearly stated in #7 on the handout. I will restate it here. 7. Allow the user, via a button on the spreadsheet, to run the series by specifying an entire range of group sizes via 3 different cells. For example, suppose the user wants to compare all groups of size 10, 15, 20, 25, ..., 95, 100, 105. Here is what the user interface might look like: ----- You have on the 2nd sheet of the Excel final birthday program handout a screen snapshot of that. That is the 3rd button you need, and that task has been illustrated quite a few times with examples using the free throws and using the smallest and largest random numbers actually generated depending on how big the group size was. The screen snapshot on page two (2nd sheet) of the handout illustrates this for you. The Caption I put on my button was Run Series and since that button is right underneath the columns K, L and M rows 1, 2, and 3 cells, its very clear what Run Series button does for you. Good luck and thanks for the questions. Go Packers! A former UNI Panther is working for the Packers, so the Maucker Student Union and Essential's spirit is adding to your season's success, I'm sure! :-) Mark