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Notes on this workbook and how to use it
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What this workbook tries to do:

This workbook summarizes changes I've to made to a Guesstimate model that aims to estimate the number of deaths that would be caused directly by a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia.

The basic structure:

- In blue are short descriptions of the change I made, along with the technical details of the change.
- In orange are the values of the parameters downstream from the change I made. These are meant to give a concrete view into how that change influenced by results.
- In purple are qualitative summaries of the changes and how they affected my result. They assume minimal technical understanding of original and update model, or techniques used in the change.

How to use this workbook:

For most people, reading through the Takeaways section (in purple) will be enough to get an idea of the kinds of changes I made and the way those changes altered my conclusions.

Those interested in the technical details of the changes will also be interested in the blue and orange sections. The section describing the technical details of the changes (blue) has comments that explain the purpose of each column (Row 2). I recommend reading the Takeaway first (purple), and then comparing the original parameter inputs/outputs (Column H) to the new parameter inputs and outputs (Column I). Then, scroll to the orange sheet to see how key downstream parameters — like the number of deaths or the amount of smoke generated — changed after that particular change. Compare those values to the outputs from the original model (in red, rows 4 and 5) to see how big of a difference a given change made to those key results.
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