AN EPIDEMIC AT THE TRACK

The laboratory in this conversation, Boston Mystery, asks you to find the SIR model which best matches the data from the horse epidemic. This is a little difficult with Slinky or any other integrator, so we have a special Java applet to use. It assigns a `score' to each model (each choice of coefficients) based on how close the curves come to the data points given in the text. The score uses the `least squares method' described more fully in the second volume of Conversational Calculus, Space, Time, and Infinity. You don't need to know how this is done, but we'll tell you: the vertical distance between the graph and each data point is squared, the squares are added together, then the square-root of the sum is taken. But all you really need to know is that the smaller the score, the better the model fits the data.

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