Simulating Controlled and Uncontrolled Reservoir Discharges

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

When simulating ponds and reservoirs in GoldSim, one of the most common types of systems we see are the combination of controlled and uncontrolled discharges. Examples of uncontrolled discharges include evaporation losses and flood flows over a spillway. Examples of controlled discharges include water that is pumped out or flows through an opening in the outlet works. Controlled outflows deliver water to service necessary uses downstream such as irrigation or industrial water demands.

In this blog post, I will walk through the process of setting up this type of model in GoldSim. Hopefully this will provide a good resource for those of you working on conceptual water balance models for your projects.

Playing Mastermind with GoldSim

Posted by Ryan Roper

This last weekend, I went into nerd mode and created a GoldSim version of the classic game Mastermind. If you're not familiar with Mastermind, here's the Wikipedia article about it: Mastermind (board game). According to the article, "Mastermind...is a code-breaking game for two players. The modern game with pegs was invented in 1970 by Mordecai Meirowitz, an Israeli postmaster and telecommunications expert. It resembles an earlier pencil and paper game called Bulls and Cows that may date back a century or more." I play this game with my kids and it often leaves me musing about what kind of strategy or algorithm I might devise to more systematically make guesses to solve the code. This musing usually lasts about 5 or 10 minutes before I decide it's not worth my time and I go on with my life. However, recently I thought it would be a fun and interesting exercise to create a GoldSim version of Mastermind.

Simulating a One-Armed Bandit

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

If you ever run into GoldSim employees in Las Vegas, you will never see them sitting in front of a slot machine. Dealing with probabilities on a daily basis gives us a feel for our odds when dealing with uncertainty. But what if we built a model that only simulates the one-armed bandit? This is the question I asked myself the other day when Rick mentioned the dice-rolling model. What I thought would end up to be a mere exercise in probabilities ended up in a little game that is almost as addicting as solitaire!

Customizing Dashboards

Posted by Ryan Roper

GoldSim dashboards offer a way of putting an ‘interface’ on your GoldSim model that allows you or a colleague or client to change inputs or settings and to view model results. Creating good dashboards may have as much to do with making them nice-looking and easy to use as it has to do with mere functionality (i.e. providing access to appropriate inputs and results). The focus of this post is mainly about appearance and usability of dashboards. I’ll offer some ideas based on experiences I had while working on a project with a group at Sandia National Laboratories.