Netlogo: How to compute sum of items of lists within a list? - netlogo

Question

I would like to make the sum = the total of pollen recieved by a plant from other plants (Donnors) which is stored in a list of a list (own by each turtle = plant).
The following code make an error (when computing the sum):
OF expected input to be an agent or agentset but got the list
[[119.05593 50 50] [301.25853 50 50] [30.23906 50 50] [460.525845 50
50] [55.16717 50 50] [301.25853 50 50]] instead.
Does any one could help me about the mistake in the line "set Tot_pol sum ..." ?
Many thanks for your help.
to check-pol [m] ;; we check the pollen recieved by the two morphs
set Donnors [] ;; empty list of pollen donnors
ask zsps with [morph = m] ;; morph of the pollen reciever
[
set totpol 0
;; check for pollen donnors and morph for compatiblity within a radius :
ask zsps with[distance myself <= 20 and morph != m]
[
set totpol (NMaleFlowers * 100 * item round (distance myself) pollination-list) ;; the farther the less pollen
set Donnors lput [ (list totpol NMaleFlowers NFemFlowers)] of myself Donnors
]
set Tot_pol sum [ item (position 0 Donnors) Donnors ] of Donnors ;; total of pollen recieved
]
end

Answer 1

Luke's answer is good and should fix your problem. I suspect, however, that you are going to be doing lots of these types of sums. You may wish to set up a to-report that you can use for whichever item you want to sum over, just by passing the item number and the name of the list of lists. It would look like this:
to-report sum-item [#pos #listoflists ]
let items map [ x -> item #pos x ] #listoflists
report reduce [ [a b] -> a + b] items
end
The first line extracts the relevant item (remember index from 0) into a new list which the second line sums.
You would then use it with set Tot_pol sum-item 0 Donnors

Answer 2

Here's an answer that is not actually responding to your question. Instead, it is a more NetLogo-ish way of doing what I think you are trying to do with your code.
to check-pol [m]
ask zsps with [morph = m]
[ let senders zsps with [distance myself <= 20 and morph != m]
set totpol sum [NMaleFlowers * 100 * round (distance myself)] of senders
]
end
Your code gets into levels of ask that I think are unnecessary. What I think you are doing with your list is keeping track of the pollen donors. But an agentset is a cleaner approach and then you can simply pull out the information you want from the agentset using of.
Further, when you ask zsps with[distance myself <= 20 and morph != m] to set variable values in your code, then THOSE agents (not the receiving agent) are the ones having their variables changed. I think you are trying to take the perspective of the receiver of pollen, who looks around and received pollen from the other agents that are close enough. So the receiving agent should have the value changed.
This is not tested.

Answer 3

I'm not 100% sure what you're after here (you may want to look at the Minimum, Complete, and Verifiable Example guidelines), but if I'm reading you right you want the sum of the first item for each entry in the Donners list.
As to why your approach didn't work- NetLogo is telling you with that error that you've used of with a list, but of only works with agents or agentsets. Instead, you have to use a list processing approach. The simplest way might be to use sum in conjunction with map first in order to get what you need:
to sum-first-item
let example-list [ [ 1 2 3 ] [ 4 5 6 ] [ 7 8 9 ] ]
let sum-of-firsts sum map first example-list
print sum-of-firsts
end
To translate to Donnors, try:
set Tot_pol sum map first Donnors
That should work, but without reproducible a code example I can't check.