# Model Review (MA3) - Assumptions, Variables, Equations, and their Contextual Meaning Canvas item text. **BUILT 2026-11-02 by canvasync as assignment [592197](https://elearning.mines.edu/courses/81632/assignments/592197), unpublished, due Fri 11/6 11:59pm MT; Scott publishes.** - Type: **assignment**, submission types **text entry and online upload** (either one counts) - Group: Modeling Project Work (see the gradebook spec on hold in `Administration/`) - Points: **1**, complete/incomplete - Due: **Friday 11/6, 11:59 pm MT** - Publish: unpublished, Scott publishes - Title: proposed convention, confirm with Scott — **Modeling Project - Assumptions, Variables, Equations, and their Contextual Meaning (MA3)** (the MA2/MP3 pattern) ## Description Expectation, about one page, a bit more if your table runs long. On MA2 you told me the question your model was built to answer, found it in a primary source, and showed me its most relevant element while I was just "glancing." Now I want the explanation, the middle of your talk. The audience card asks everyone for the key assumption and the main equation with its symbols named, so this is where you decide what you hope they write down. No MA2 yet? Name the model and its source in section 2 and carry on. Type it in the box or upload a PDF, following the seven sections in the guide and using their headings. A photo or screenshot from the source is fine. 1. The model in your own words, three to five sentences, no symbols yet, the way you'd say it to a classmate who missed the reading 2. The working part, the equation, rule, procedure, or curve that does the work, shown as it appears in the source and cited by equation number, figure, or page, then reverse engineered with the audience in mind. What are its dependencies, what is its output, what are its parameters fixed at the start, and what varies as it runs? 3. The pieces, sorted, a table like the one you built on MP2, one row per piece, with what it is in the world, its units, and whether it is a dependency, the output, a parameter, or something that varies 4. Read it aloud, one paragraph, piece by piece, saying what each piece does. If there's a piece you can't say in words yet, point at it 5. Assumptions, located, two to four, each with where it lives and whether the authors state it or you inferred it. Star the key one 6. One knob to an extreme, push one parameter from your table to 0, to 1, to something huge. What does the model do, and does that make sense? 7. What changed since the last form, and why? What do you need? If the model is not the one from MA1 or MA2, say so in one line. Think of this as a log of your ongoing efforts The guide opens with how I unpack a model, in case it helps, and its second page picks the whale model back up from MA2's example, Johnston and Painter's equation (2.2), unpacked section by section. Feedback comes back in the words of the rubric on the course page Project Work, mainly the rows for modeling process and for validity and correctness. MA4, slated for 11/13, will ask what your model says about the world, and what its limitations are. Links (from the manifest once published; omit until then, no TK): - the guide PDF, `Activities/Assumptions, Variables, Equations, and their Contextual Meaning (MA3)/MATH310F26-MA3-AssumptionsEquations.pdf` - the course page *Project Work*, `Lecture Notes/MATH310F26 - Project Work.md` - the audience card, `Activities/Audience Card/MATH310F26-AudienceCard.pdf`