Project Java Webmaster: Glenn A. Richard
Mineral Physics Institute
SUNY Stony Brook
This is an exercise in interpreting data that is generated by a phenomenon that causes the data to become biased. When you click the New Impact button, a series of meteor impacts generates round craters on the dark-gray impact field. You are presented with the end product of this series of events. The craters occur in size classes that are color-coded. The quantity in the Number of Impactors box, which you can set before generating impacts, controls the number of impacts that will occur.
After generating the series of impacts, it becomes your assigned task to figure out how many impact craters correspond to each of the size class categories. However, counting them is not enough. The impacts occur in a randomized sequence, and during the process, new craters can obliterate old ones that lie within their area of impact. Thus, large craters may destroy many smaller ones, a sufficient quantity of small craters can ultimately destroy a large one. In the Guess boxes, enter the number of impacts that you believe occurred within each category. Then click the Disribution button to find out how close you were to the truth.
Mikhail Sabaev: sabaevm@ug.cs.sunysb.edu
visitors since May 2, 1997