Optimizing for readability

Community Help
#1

I’m trying to write a notebook for two purposes - to teach a little probability theory and to show how kids (middle school) should/could use Observable. I don’t love the viewof/generator stuff in this simple example, but I get the purpose. I’m wondering if folks can see a way to make the bulk flow of the notebook more readable, perhaps hiding more stuff down “at the bottom”?

Then I know I have lots of work to do on pretty pictures and graphs to show them convergence. Maybe I can even throw in some simple ML. :slight_smile:

#2

Not sure how much this helps, but here’s my take on the simulation:

The main difference is that I pinned the cells that perform the simulation so that I can explain how they work. I also refactored it so that the code for running a single simulation is independent of the animation/iteration. Then I used a generator at the end to show how the values converge.

#3

Definitely helped. I’ve restructured more like yours:

But, few more mundane questions now:

  1. Is there a way to detect the strategy checkbox changing and reset the counts?
  2. Is there a way to put a label on that checkbox? If I surround it in label, it blows up the viewof value handling.
  3. Is there a way to only do the runs AFTER the button is clicked? Right now it runs 100 times on load, which makes it less interactive.

Thanks, this is fun!

#4

1. It’s easier if you avoid mutable state… In mine, the cells rerun from scratch whenever something they reference changes, so I don’t have to remember to reset.

2. You can import checkbox from Jeremy’s inputs bazaar for a nice labeled checkbox:

3. Yes, you can define a view that waits for you to click a button. Here is an example: