Growth of Rat Population
POW
Gillian Hooper
Two rats, one male and one female run up the ropes attacking a boat to the dock. The ship leaves the port. The rats get of on an empty Island where they have no natural predators. On the day they get there (January 1st) the female had six babies three male and three female and would do so 40 days after. Those children would then have 6 kids of there own on their 120 day birthday and then would have a new litter every 40 days after that each with three males and three females. Being on the island they have ideal living conditions and none of the rats died in the first year. How many rats would be on the island at the end of the year?
When I first looked at this problem I tried to just make a list of the days and multiplied what I thought was the number of females breeding at that point by six to find the number of newborns, but just trying to do the math in my head ended up getting confused, so I tried colors, but nothing seemed to help. I then asked a friend how they set the problem up which made it easier to understand and I was able to do the math and have it be organised in a way that allowed me to solve it knowing and being able to keep track of the age of each rat and how many would be breeding that day. Allowing me to find the answer of 1,808 rats at the end of the year.
Overall I feel that if I had more time for this problem I could probably have found a different way to solve it, but with this limited amount of time I had to ask for a way to keep the age of the rats organised and then I worked to solve that. I felt I used collaborate and listen as a strong suit for this problem asking questions when I didn’t understand and trying to find ways to make the formulas or table better, but this problem showed me that I couldn’t just jump into a problem and expect to keep track in my head I need to start with a more organized plan, but I was able to solve it in the end.