The topic of Week 10 is the “behavior space” — the NetLogo tool for designing and running an experiment using a model. We finished designing a NetLogo model to explore the synchronization of firefly flashing as an example, and ran some simple experiments. Students should be familiar from the previous week’s reading with the basics of the firefly model, and also the goals of multi-agent simulation.

Week 11 is the important programming and algorithmic concept of recursion. The week moves from recursive mathematical functions, to recursively defined graphical objects such as Sierpinski curves, to recursive sorting.

During weeks 8 and 9, we will be exploring what makes a good multi-agent simulation, or a good individual-based model.  Students should read the introduction and Firefly sections of “Thinking Like a Wolfe, a Sheep, or a Firefly” before class on Wednesday, April 11.  Students should also read either the first chapter of the text found at http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8108.html, or the Sycara article on “Multiagent Systems” plus the Blikstein & Wilensky article on “Less is More.”

Term project proposals are due at Prof. Dickerson’s office by Friday afternoon.  See the homework page for more details.

The main topics for Week 7 are lists (sometimes called arrays) and passing inputs (sometimes called parameters or arguments) to procedures and reporters.

• New NetLogo commands:
  • list item fput lput , etc.
• Reading Assignment: All the NetLogo dictionary commands pertaining to lists, and the NetLogo programming guide on procedures with inputs
• General Concepts: data structures

MIDTERM EXAM: Will be Wednesday evening 7-9:30pm on April 6 (Week 8 of the semester, immediately following Spring Break week, as announced on the course syllabus).

The main topics for Weeks 5 and Week 6 are iteration and algorithm efficiency.

• New NetLogo commands:
  • to-report
  • while ask-concurrent
    
  • print write word
    
  • all? any?  count
  • hatch
• Reading Assignment: Explore, in the dictionary, the NetLogo commands for input and out as well as the hatch command and agentset commands.  Read in the programmers guide about reporters.
• New Algorithmics Concepts: iteration, Asymptotic complexity and the “big Oh” notation.
• Simulation/NetLogo Concepts: How to make a simulation run fast(er) — comparing different ways of accomplishing the same goal. Also the production and consumption of resources.

HW3 is now posted, with links to a sample solution for HW2.

If you have not done so yet, read the NetLogo programming guide!

Week 3 Topics (Including NetLogo Commands to Explore in the Dictionary)

Netlogo Concepts and Commands:

• if ifelse
• math expressions
• math functions
• globals
• boolean variables
• turtle sensor (primitives) and the environment: in-radius, in-cone, turtles-here, patch-ahead min-n-of max-n-of n-of

Simulation Concepts: Local-knowledge

Computer Science Breadth Topics:

• Algorithmics tools: selection
• Introduction to Boolean logic and conditions