20Jun / 2023

Friend simulation system, with ChatGPT

Philippe Vandenbroeck and Santiago Ortiz were curious about a system that incorporated knowledge from a real person and ChatGPT, which is good for smushing text together in a coherent format. So they embedded text from Vandenbroeck into the ChatGPT model so that he could with himself. Ortiz describes the technical aspects of the system here.

See also the AI chatbot modeled on texts from a fiancee who passed. Looking back on our lives in a few decades is going to be weird.

Tags: ChatGPT, Philippe Vandenbroeck, Santiago Ortiz, simulation

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06Dec / 2022

Asteroid simulator for before the big one hits

Knowing the impact of an asteroid falling in your city might not seem immediately relevant, but if there’s one headed toward Earth and NASA is unable to knock it off course with one of their rockets, you will definitely want to know what will happen and prepare accordingly.

Good thing Neal Agarwal, based on research from Gareth Collins and Clemens Rumpf, made an asteroid simulator. Set the material, size, speed, impact angle, and location, and see the effects from the resulting crater, fireball, shock wave, wind, and earthquake.

Tags: asteroids, Neal Agarwal, simulation

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06Sep / 2022

Gerrymandering detection with simulations

Harry Stevens, for The Washington Post, how simulations can be used to detect severely gerrymandered congressional districts. In the interactive, you play the role of concerned citizen with the task of proposing a map that more closely resembles the political leanings of the state as a whole.

Tags: gerrymandering, simulation, Washington Post

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16Feb / 2022

Interactive traffic simulator

Traffic always seems so sensitive to the smallest disruptions. Someone pulls over to the side of the road? Traffic jam. Slight incline on the freeway? Traffic jam. One person weaving in and out of lanes? Traffic jam. With this traffic simulator by Martin Treiber, you can test out all the possible scenarios.

You can use different types of roads, place speed limits, start construction, increase or decrease the number of lanes, adjust the incline, and even define politeness among drivers. Experience the frustrations of driving, right from your computer. [via kottke]

Tags: Martin Treiber, simulation, traffic

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19Feb / 2021

Simulation for different immunity scenarios

As vaccinations roll out, we work towards herd immunity, there are various challenges to consider along the way. Thomas Wilburn and Richard Harris, reporting for NPR, used simulations to imagine three scenarios: a more infectious variant of the coronavirus, high initial immunity, and low initial immunity.

Since it’s a simulation it of course doesn’t consider every real-life detail of immunity and viral spread, but the animations and the hexagon grids provide a good overhead view.

Tags: coronavirus, herd, immunity, NPR, simulation

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19Feb / 2021

Simulation for different immunity scenarios

Since it’s a simulation it of course doesn’t consider every real-life detail of immunity and viral spread, but the animations and the hexagon grids provide a good overhead view.

Tags: coronavirus, herd, immunity, NPR, simulation

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21Oct / 2020

Using the FiveThirtyEight model, see how the election odds shift with different scenarios

With each model update, FiveThirtyEight runs 40,000 simulations, or what-ifs, to calculate the odds for who will win the election. Their new interactive lets you experiment with all of the what-ifs to see how the odds shift when a candidate wins a state.

It answers the question, “If ______ wins in ______ and in ______, etc., what are the chances of him winning the whole thing?”

So if Trump wins a very red state or Biden wins a very blue state, the overall odds don’t change that much. But if a very red goes blue, or a very blue goes red, then the odds swing dramatically.

There’s a good lesson on conditional probability somewhere in there.

Tags: election, FiveThirtyEight, simulation

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10Aug / 2020

How air spreads on a subway train

If someone sneezes in a closed space, you hope that the area has good ventilation, because those sneeze particles are going to spread. The New York Times explains in the context of a subway train.

Wear a mask.

Tags: coronavirus, mask, New York Times, simulation, subway

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07Aug / 2020

Visual explanation for how herd immunity works

Herd immunity works when you have enough people who are immune to a disease, maybe because they already got it or there’s a vaccine, so that the disease can’t spread anymore to those who don’t have a resistance. For The Washington Post, Harry Stevens is back with simulitis to demonstrate how this works in greater detail.

It starts at the individual level, generalizes to a larger group, and then zooms out to the more concrete state level. It ends with an interactive that lets you test the thresholds yourself.

Each step builds on the previous, which provides clarity to an otherwise abstract idea.

Tags: coronavirus, Harry Stevens, immunity, simulation, Washington Post

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04May / 2020

Playable simulations to decide what happens next

The timelines keep shifting and people are getting antsy for many valid (and not-so-valid) reasons. When will this end? Will we ever get “normal” again? At this point, simulations are probably the closest we can get to seeing what might happen next. Marcel Salathé and Nicky Case peer into what happens next with these playable simulations.

Where many simulations have felt like distant, abstract ideas, Salathé and Case’s explanations and interactives are rooted in optimism and practical things that we can do now.

Tags: coronavirus, Marcel Salathé, Nicky Case, simulation

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Category Archives: simulation

Friend simulation system, with ChatGPT

Asteroid simulator for before the big one hits

Gerrymandering detection with simulations

Interactive traffic simulator

Simulation for different immunity scenarios

Simulation for different immunity scenarios

Using the FiveThirtyEight model, see how the election odds shift with different scenarios

How air spreads on a subway train

Visual explanation for how herd immunity works

Playable simulations to decide what happens next

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