Individual-Based Modeling For The Masses: Fill & Download for Free

Everyone Dies™! Oh goody, I get to facilitate another world ending scenario! It’s been a while!According to Numbers of Insects (Species and Individuals) an estimated 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) insects are alive at any one time.To my great shame I was unable to find the statistics for Hemiptera (true bugs), but I will assume that the questioner meant insects. Also, I am not taking account of the vast number of insects that are dead at any one time.Dog breeds vary in mass from the 3kg Chihuahua to the 90kg St Bernards.Now, here’s what would happen if the planet suddenly acquired 10 quintillion chihuahuas.10 quintillion chihuahua bugs is 30 quintillion kg of high energy meat. Insect populations are typically land based, so let’s presume that we get an even spread over the world’s land area.We are buried under a layer of dying insects 200 metres deep, almost 2 thirds of the way up the Eiffel Tower. Those not in a building or at sea are instantly killed, those inside short buildings are slowly suffocated. Insects on the margins of the land start to topple into the sea. The mass behaves somewhat like a liquid, and the bases of buildings protruding from the mass are under pressure.The remnants of humanity try their best to live off the readily available protein… but there’s a problem. All the insects were supersized and so, died. Insects run the decomposition process. Without any insects to consume the insects, the bodies begin to mummify, and mold and bacteria take over. The mass of meat enriches the seas and massive algal blooms take place. Life that wasn’t an insect already starts to die out, as blue-green algae releases vast amount of carbon dioxide. Everything chokes.In the case that we used the larger dog breeds as our scaling up model, the situation is similar, except now the devastating meat flood is on the scale of mountains. It pulverises everything, including itself, and gradually flows into the sea, carving out valleys as it does so. Land dwelling organisms cease to be, and the sea once again suffers a fierce algal bloom which chokes all life as we know it.In both scenarios there is a good possibility that Earth becomes a place much like Venus. I could easily be wrong about the far reaching global consequences, but feel free to correct me.

Yes.Iannaccone, L. R., & Makowsky, M. D. (2007). Accidental atheists? Agent-based explanations for the persistence of religious regionalism. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46(1), 1-16.This paper presents a new, multi-agent approach to the study of religious commitment. Starting with a variant on Schelling’s classic model of mobility and segregation, we develop a multi-agent religion simulation (MARS) that captures a wide range of insights from standard theories of religious choice, social influence, and preference formation. Compared to traditional, statistical methods of analyzing religious change, MARS better describes the actual process by which people make religious choices and better explains the persistence of religious regionalism. In a mobile and pluralistic society, stable regional patterns require a balanced combination of adaptation to one’s current social environment and attachment to one’s personal identity.Iannacone and Makowsky specifically state:The fundamental problem really isn’t statistical at all, though it certainly creates statistical hazards. The problem is that we lack a coherent model linking individual behavior to aggregate outcomes and vice-versa. Regression and its more sophisticated cousins will never get us where we need to go because they bypass the links we need to address. Regression reduces the macro-micro link to regional averages or dummy variables. The reduction contradicts what we already know about social influence, namely its operation through close social ties which depend on person-specific social networks. The fundamental feature of social influence, documented in scores of case studies since the 1960s, is how much it varies over time and across people. People are heavily influenced by their close friends but largely untouched by mere neighbors, much less the mass of strangers who make up 99.9 percent of their city, state, or region.

A2A:I am going to assume these are actual products, not tech products. The best business model is whatever makes the highest margin - you need to make a profit and keep cash in your business. That said, let's look at production models for each - the best one is going to depend on how much variation your options offer on your base model. I'm going to assume you've got some automation to your process, and mass produce. (If you are hand making these, it doesn't particularly matter - you are in the couture business, and this is an entirely different cost/price structure.)Typically, the most efficient process is to offer one product sku at a time to the market. The multiple options depends on how close the options or multiple products are to one another, and whether you are testing versions to see which is the preferred option for launch, or if you are considering selling various versions.If the options provide high differentiation on the basic core model, you do better to produce different versions of the product (multiple full products), and create tiered pricing. You can then maximize your cost efficiency in production scheduling and test market options with the tiers.If the options are slight in differentiation, then you do better offering one product, with several options that are individually priced. In this model, you take advantage of the production model called mass customization, which saves customization to the last possible stage. You run production on the base model in large volume, to get the most efficient pricing, then run customization on the models based on the options offered in batches once they are known, often closest to the distribution location or specialized locations to take further advantage of efficiencies.For additional assistance, I'd need more information on your business. I hope you find the right solution and get to market soon!Kind regards,Alexandra