Ŀ                                                     Amount of time involved:                                                     Ŀ   In order to make the Simulator and the Articles useful (in your hands),       we are talking about several hours. How many hours? It depends how much       you want to get involved, how much you already know about the topic, how      actively you want to be part of the potential solution, and many other        factors.                                                                                                                                                    Estimated time:                                                                                                                             Getting familiar with the package, understand the purpose: 30 min - 1 hour    Articles explaining the Simulator: 30 min - 1 hour                            Trial runs of the Simulator (with reading help menus): approx. 1 hour         Using the Simulator (greatly depends on the speed of your computer):                 Your time to provide input: few minutes                                       Actual run time can vary from minutes to hours depending the                  complexity of the scenario you set up (via the inputs). However,              while the Simulator is running, you don't need to be present.          Articles: 2 min - 2 hours depending the length of the individual article      Quizzes: 10 - 20 minutes                                                      Coin Simulator: 10 - 20 minutes                                                Ŀ               Time consuming activities and tips how to optimize time usage:               Ŀ   1. F1 Help facilities: When you press F1, the first screen usually tells         just about everything you should know about that particular item.             If you understand whatever is being explained, you can stop reading it.       Most of the times many other pages will follow with ultra-detailed            explanations.Those can be skipped, if the first screen was sufficient.                                                                                   2. The Simulator: The more times you will use it, the more fictitious or         real scenarios you end up simulating, the more obvious the problem            will become to you. Tips 1: the "full gear" Simulations may take              hours. You don't have to be there. Just provide the inputs, start up          the Simulator and walk away. Whenever you have the time to come back          to it, you will have the results. SAVE THEM, so if you find a                 particular scenario interesting, you won't have to redo it.                   Tip 2: while getting familiar with the Simulator, use no more than 100        Sample Workers or "clones" (obtain details via F1, when prompted)                                                                                        3. The Library: The shortest article is less than 20 lines, the longest          one is 4004 lines. There are over 20 articles. Browse through the             Index (what you will see upon selecting Library) and what immediately         follows it, the index with a few lines description of the articles.           Tip: If you don't care to become an "expert", but still want to take          this project seriously, read Article 11 in the Library.                                                                                                  4. Quizzes: They only take a few minutes, yet they are not essential to          the understanding of main issue at stake.                                     Tip: Take Quiz number 1, to gauge your knowledge about the                    fundamentals involved. In fact, take it twice. First time when you run        into it and after you have read some of the articles and ran the              Simulator a few times. Then compare the two scores. Quizzes 2 and 3           are highly optional.                                                                                                                                     5. The Coin Simulator: You can skip it, if you know anything at all about        "randomness" and that computers are able "to be random and/or                 unpredictable", yet the law of large numbers still apply to them.             You can definitely skip it, if you know what computer simulations are         all about.                                                                   If you are reading this the first time, press Esc now. Return here when         you read the first 9 articles in the Library, which are the explanation of      the Simulator and instructions how to use it. The following couple of           pages give suggestions how to optimize time while using the Simulator.                                                                                                                                                                          Ŀ         Advanced suggestions how to optimize time while using the Simulator:         Ŀ    The simulation is as long as it takes for at least 1 more than 50% of         the Sample Workers to contract AIDS. Quite obviously, if the Tested           Worker claims an Accident 1 out of 3 Encounters (surgeon who gets stuck,      stabbed, etc. 1 out of 3 cases), the simulation will end much faster          than if the claim is 1 out of 15 cases (hence the Sample Workers are the      clones representing the Tested Worker in the Simulator). Even a single        simulation can become rather lengthy. There are several other                 characteristics which can influence the speed of the simulation. Try to       understand the Simulator by using the "one round" runs first. It is           simpler and easier to understand what it is all about.                        Once you feel familiar with the setup, the multiple (or multi-round)          simulations are more impressive.                                              Try to "schedule" multiple runs, because they can take many hours,            especially if you are simulating a person or a group with relatively          rare exposure (1 out of 30 or higher). Schedule them in such way, that        when you know you will be "out" for the first part of the day, find an        opportunity in the morning to punch in the starting numbers and by the        time you are back in your office, it will be done.                                                                                                          Despite the warnings about the time, the AIDS Simulator is not something      which takes up any significant part of your day. It takes about a minute      to punch in that few number, the computer does the rest.                        Ŀ    The speed of the Simulator depends on the following factors:                                                                                                                                                                                               Simulation    Simulation                                                      slower         faster      Ĵ    Percentage of the population already HIV+= lower numbers higher numbers                 Percentage increase per year= lower numbers higher numbers                      *Frequency of accidents= less frequent more frequent                        Sample Number (clones)= higher numberslower numbers       * Less frequent means higher numbers (1 out of 50) is entered as 50           Bug: The "Time spent" is not reliable if simulation crosses midnight.                                                                                       Additional to these, the speed of your computer will dramatically             influences the simulation. Make sure that if there is a "Turbo" mode on       your computer, it is switched ON. Similarly, if your computer has "speed      settings" indicated in Mhz, set to the highest  possible number.               