[ADMB Users] ADMB in 10 mins

[Arni Magnusson]

Hi Mark,

Last April, I was in a similar situation. The instructor of an R modelling 
class offered me 10 minutes to present what ADMB is about.

I frantically put together a short slideshow, which I have now uploaded to 
http://admb-project.org/community/outreach.

Given my audience, I kept it on a simple level: "ADMB is fast, flexible, 
and reliable - but somewhat tricky to learn and use."

I ended my presentation with a quick demonstration (last slide in 
admb_vigo.pdf), where I compiled and ran a couple of models, tweaked the 
phases and initial values, and finally plotted the model fit and MCMC 
chains in R. Too fast to describe the details, but enough to explain the 
workflow.

It sounds like you are thinking of a more advanced audience, familiar with 
optimization concepts, but maybe you can borrow something from my outline. 
In my case, the audience was very receptive and some contacted me 
afterwards to get them started.

Arni

P.S. The "pella" model I demonstrated is a model I wrote, with a more 
elaborate user interface than the standard "pella-t" example. I used it 
because it is easy to explain (easier than pella-t), and it has MCMC 
capability, nicely formatted output, and a control file to set initial 
values, limits, and phases. I will release the "pella" model on 
http://admb-project.org/examples later this year.