Complex Model Reflection

When I began this project, the problem I came up with revolved around the relation of food to population. I wanted to know why we grow so much food, and yet there are still people who are starving. I came across a wonderful article that gave me percentages of countries by class that use how much food. Click here to see the article


After studying the pie chart, as shown on the left, I wondered how the countries were organized into classes. I looked at the resource that this pie chart use at this site.

Then I tried to brainstorm a way to show the relation of world population to the consumption of food in a system. I became stuck. I then was using the "Stumble Upon!" tool that was showed to us in class, and I came upon this amazing website called "Breathing Earth".

This site blew my mind! It shows the population of each country, the birth rate of each country, the death rate of each country, the world population, etc. (Keep in mind that the death rate does not include terrorist acts, natural disasters, etc.) It has so much useful and interesting information. I then started to think...how is the birth and death rate going to change the population of each country in the future.

I then settled on my new problem statement:Problem Statement: What will the population be in a specific country on a specific date be in the future? I went through the website "Breathing Earth" to gather information about eleven different countries. These countries represent a 50% sample of the world's population. I made sure to choose countries from different parts of the world from different classes. My first brainstorming list is in the following screen shot (click it to enlarge):

I gathered my population information from the "Breathing Earth" website on February 28, 2010 at 8PM. I make sure to specify this because that website is constantly changing because it is realtime. Before I created my system, I made sure to create a map of exactly what I want to do. Here is a screen shot of my map (click it to enlarge):











I then knew exactly how I wanted to build my system. To see how I built my system using formulas in Excel watch my video by clicking on this link.

My finished system is so fun to use now that it is finished! I can now choose any of the countries and type in any date in the future to get a predicted population of that country. Here is a screen shot of my finished system (click on it to enlarge):

The user can input data into the yellow boxes: a future date and then click the drop down box to choose a country. Then automatically the predicted population, net change, and percentage of change appears. The system takes into consideration the chosen country's starting population on February 28, 2010, it's birth rate, and it's death rate.

Overall, I really enjoyed building this system. It gave me an opportunity to learn more about Microsoft Excel. I discovered many tricks and formulas that I did not know before! Students can use this system to see how population can change in different countries and see how the change is different all over the world. Students can also use this system to compare different countries around the world! I hope you enjoy and find it useful!