POW 4 - Growth of Rat Populations

Problem Statement -

Two rats are alone on an island with no predators, and have no chance of dying for a year. Our
goal is to identify how many rats will be on the island in exactly one year after the female rat
gives birth (the original rat will continue to give birth every 40 days for the whole year). The
information we have to solve this is that each litter will include 6 rats, and 3 of them will be
female. After a rat is born it has 120 days before it gives birth, and after that, every 40 days a
litter is born.

Visual Representation -

I continued like this until I got to January 1st again.

Process -

To start this problem, I identified how many rats there were on January 1st after the original
female gave birth. (there were 8) From there I would count forty days on the calendar until I got
to the correct date, and then would identify which rats had given birth, adding those to the total.
For each forty days I split the amount of rats in half (because half are male) and then I
organized all the female rats by whether they were giving in 40 days, 80 days, or 120 days. To
identify how many rats there were each 40 days, I would look at the number of rats who had
given birth, and add that to the existing total. From here I would split the number in half, and
then add the rats that were giving birth in 80 days (40 days had passed so they would give birth
in 40 days now) to the rats giving birth in 40 days. Then to find the rats that gave birth in 120
days, I would take the amount of rats that were born on whatever date I was at, and split the
number in two because have were female. For example on March 19th there were 20 rats
because the previous month there had been 14, and at this time, only one rat was giving birth
every 40 days, so I added 6 and 14 to get my total of 20. From here I split the number of rats in
half so there were 10 male, and and then added the three mice that were born on January 1st to
the giving birth in 40 days section which equaled 4 rats. Then the rats born on February 2nd
were put in the gives birth in 80 days section equaling three rats, and the rats born March 19th
were put in the gives birth in 120 days section, equaling three rats.

Solution -

On January 1st the following year, there will be 974 rats on the island.

Evaluation -

This has been my favorite problem so far. I was able to logically solve it, and wasnt required to
come up with an equation to answer the question, which was something I had struggled with in
the past. Personally I thought that this was one of the easier POWs that weve had so far this
year, and like how clear and concise the question/information was.

Self Assessment -

I think that I deserve an A on this assignment, because I put a lot of effort into the process I
utilized to solve the problem. I drew out this entire problem on separate sheets of paper,
guessing and checking until I found a process that worked. I am not positive that my answer is
correct, but I have double checked my work, and attempted make the description of my process
as understandable as possible.