NetLogo: normal distribution - netlogo

I have the variable "commitment" that manages across a slider but I want that the turtles take it so that the information is distributed by a normal distribution.
to uncouple
if coupled?
[ if (couple-length > commitment ) or
([couple-length] of partner) > ([commitment] of partner)
[ set coupled? false
set couple-length 0
]
end

It is hard to interpret your question, but probably you do not want a normal distribution. I suppose you are probably after something like the following, where p-breakup is the probability that a long-lived couple breaks up when this proc is called.
to-report expired? ;; turtle proc
report
coupled? and (
(couple-length > commitment )
or
([couple-length] of partner > [commitment] of partner)
)
end
to uncouple ;; turtle proc
if expired? [
set coupled? (random-float 1 < p-breakup)
if not coupled? [
set couple-length 0
ask partner [set couple-length 0]
]
]
end
I'm assuming from your question that commitment is a global constant applying to all couples. (If not, there appears to be redundancy in your specification.) I will also note that there are better ways to handle stochastic break up. (Specifically, determine the termination date at couple formation, and keep a schedule, so that each tick you only have to work with couples whose time is up.)

Related

Percentage in netlogo

I want to write in Netlogo that a certain percentage of the agent's population has this attribute. How do I do that in NetLogo?
So far, in a toy model, I do it manually. i.e: ask n-of 740 households [set composition 1] when in fact I want to say: ask 8% of the households to set composition 1.
There are two ways. I will call them ex-ante and ex-post.
Ex-ante
A frequent approach is to let each agent have a certain chance (expressed as the percentage value) of doing something. In this case you will use the random-float command in combination with your percentage value, which is the standard way to make things happen in NetLogo according to a certain probability (see here, or also see just random if you're working with integers). It can be used directly within the create-turtles block of commands:
globals [
the-percentage
]
turtles-own [
my-attribute
]
to setup
clear-all
set the-percentage 0.083 ; In this example we set the percentage to be 8.3%.
create-turtles 500 [
if (random-float 1 < the-percentage) [
set attribute 1
]
]
end
This means that you will not always have the exact number of turtles having that attribute. If you check count turtles with [attribute = 1] on multiple iterations, you will see that the number varies. This approach is good if you want to reproduce the probability of something happening (over a population of agents or over time), which is the case for many uses of NetLogo models.
Ex-post
The ex-post approach follows the logic that you more or less expressed: first you create a number of turtles, later you assign to them the attribute. In this case, you simply need to treat the percentage as in any other mathematical expression: multiply it by the total number of turtles to get the relevant turtles:
globals [
the-percentage
]
turtles-own [
my-attribute
]
to setup
clear-all
set the-percentage 0.083
create-turtles 500
ask n-of (count turtles * the-percentage) turtles [
set attribute 1
]
end
With this approach, you will always have the exact same number of turtles with that attribute. In fact, if you run count turtles with [attribute = 1] on multiple iterations you'll see that the result is always 41 (500 * 0.083 = 41.5, in fact if the number passed to n-of is fractional, it will be rounded down).

ask turtles - ordering of agentset

I would like to apply some process stochastically, but the order matters, or rather it should be done at random, how can I select a set of the same turtles to "treat" but to do it such that each tick, the order is random?
ask turtles [
;; apply a process to turtles, but not all turtles will get something as the pool of energy may have run out by the time they are selected.
]
Elements of agentsets (such as turtles) are always returned in a random order. Each time you use ask with an agentset, it will ask them in a new, random order. From the docs on agentsets:
An agentset is not in any particular order. In fact, it’s always in a random order. And every time you use it, the agentset is in a different random order. This helps you keep your model from treating any particular turtles, patches or links differently from any others (unless you want them to be). Since the order is random every time, no one agent always gets to go first.
And here is a quick example to demonstrate. If you run it in the Command Center you'll see the who numbers will be different each time you ask them to be shown.
to test
clear-all
create-turtles 10
show "Asking once..."
ask turtles [ show who ]
show "Asking a second time..."
ask turtles [ show who ]
end
And here is an example showing an energy pool that will be randomly used until it is gone. Note the turtles that will get to use it are whichever happen to come first out of the agentset for ask:
to test-pool
clear-all
let energy-pool 1000
create-turtles 100
ask turtles [
; can only act if some energy is left...
ifelse energy-pool > 0 [
let energy-use (min (list random 100 energy-pool))
set energy-pool (energy-pool - energy-use)
show (word "I used up " energy-use " energy points! " who " Only " energy-pool " points left")
] [
show (word "No energy left for me! " who)
]
]
end

Get the mean age of all turtles on the time of death

I want to get the mean age of all dying turtles. I try to achieve that with the following code snipped:
globals [mean-death-age]
turtles-own [age prob-die?]
to-report mean-age
if (prob-die? = true) [
set mean-death-age mean [age] of turtles
]
report mean-death-age
end
Every turtle has the probability of dying (prob-die?) which should be calculated new with every time step (tick). If prob-die? is set to true mean-death-age should be updated. At the moment I have the problem that
I don't know how to initiate the variable mean-death-age. Maybe, working with an if loop would help
if (ticks >= 1) [
if (prob-die? = true) [
set mean-death-age mean [age] of turtles
]
]
I don't get an update of the already calculated mean-death-age but the variable is overwritten and the mean death age of the turtles of this tick is returned
I have problems accesing the value. When I try to call it with e.g.
print mean-age
I get the error message that mean-age is turtle-only even though I tried to save is as a global variable.
The entire code is available here.
I think you're making this more complicated than it needs to be. The easiest approach would be to just keep a list of ages at which turtles die, and then take the mean of that list:
globals [death-ages]
turtles-own [age]
to setup
clear-all
create-turtles 100 [
setxy random-xcor random-ycor
set age random 100
]
set death-ages [] ; start with an empty list
reset-ticks
end
to go
if not any? turtles [ stop ]
ask turtles [
if random 100 < age [
set death-ages lput age death-ages ; add age to our list of ages of death
die
]
]
print mean death-ages
tick
end
The only downside is that your list of death-ages is going to keep growing as your model runs. If that turns out the be a problem (though it probably won't), you will need to keep track of the current average and the current count of observations and update your average with something like set avg ((n * avg) + age) / (n + 1) set n n + 1.
As for why your current code doesn't work, there would be a lot of unpacking to do to explain it all (I'm sorry I can't now). As a general comment, I would suggest trying to take a step back when you run into difficulties like this and think about the minimum amount of information that you need to solve the problem. In this case, you need to mean age of death. What the simplest way to get that? Keep a list of ages of death and take the mean of that list when needed­.

Update a monitor once per tick instead of continuously. Slow model

I know that monitors are updated several times per second, and that can be helpful when checking the output of a model; however, that is not the case for my model, it just weighing it down.
I am trying to plot data from a monitor. I want the monitor to only update the reporter once per tick, if possible.
My model currently functions but it is bogged down updating multiple times a second. I was hoping someone could help me minimize my model's computational effort by updating once per tick.
sample of current code:
globals [initial-patch0-health patch0-health intial-patch2-health patch2-health]
patches-own [ptype penergy max-penergy alive?]
to setup
clear-all
set patch-health 0
ask-patches [
setup-patches
]
reset-ticks
end
to setup-patches
let temp random 100
if temp <= 50 [
set ptype 2
set max-penergy random-in-range 0 5
set alive? true
]
if temp > 50 and temp <= 75 [
set ptype 0
set max-penergy random 10
set alive? true
]
set penergy max-penergy
set patch2-health (ptype2-health)
set patch0-health (ptype0-health)
end
to go
ask-patches
update-patch-health
tick
end
to patch-health
if ptype = 2[
set patch2-health (ptype2-health)
]
if ptype = 0 [
set patch0-health (ptype0-health)
]
end
to-report ptype2-health
report [penergy] of patches with [ptype = 2]
end
to-report ptype0-health
report [penergy] of patches with [ptype = 0]
end
My monitors and plot read (same for patch2-health):
sum (initial-patch0-health)
and
plot sum (patch0-health)
I use sum in this situation because the reporter delivers a list.
For context, I am doing a simple "sheep-wolf predation" style model but I want to monitor the initial grass health vs grass health over time, with multiple grass types (ptype). I have turtles but did not include that code here. Let me know if you need more code from me.
This code gives me the output I desire just at the cost of speed. I figured only reporting once every tick would save some computing time. Any suggestions for cleaning and speeding it up?
Your code example is not usable to me (undefined variables, patch0-health is not output from a reporter, other errors)- check the MCVE guidelines. With that in mind, I'm having trouble replicating the issue you describe- I ran a few profiler tests with a monitor present and not present, and didn't get any difference in runtime. With this setup:
extensions [ profiler ]
globals [ patch-turtle-sum profiler-results]
to setup
ca
ask n-of ( ( count patches ) / 2 ) patches [
set pcolor red
]
crt 1000 [
setxy random-pxcor random-pycor
]
set profiler-results []
reset-ticks
end
to profile-check
repeat 20 [
profiler:start
repeat 20 [
go
]
set profiler-results lput profiler:inclusive-time "go" profiler-results
profiler:reset
]
print profiler-results
end
to go
ask turtles [
fd 1
]
tick
end
to-report patch-turtle-sum-report
report sum [count turtles-here] of patches with [ pcolor = red ]
end
I ran the profile-check procedure from the interface, once with a monitor that monitors patch-turtle-sum-report present (mean go inclusive time: 678.59 ms) and once without (mean go inclusive time: 678.56 ms)- no detectable difference. However, I'm not sure if profiler accounts for monitor, so maybe that assessment is just not useful in this case. It could also be that the number of patches you're dealing with is quite large (in my test example I was doing 100 X 100 patches) so that the calculations get bogged down.
I wonder if you could get around your issue by using a monitor that just reports a variable that you manually calculate once per tick (instead of a to-report reporter)- eg to follow my example above, monitor a variable that is updated with something like:
set patch-turtle-sum sum [count turtles-here] of patches with [ pcolor = red ]
That way you control when the calculation is done, which may speed up the model if the calculation is what's actually slowing down your model.

How to change a turtle's attribute if one of its links disappear?

In NetLogo: suppose the model has
a turtle (0) of breed A with undirected links with 3 turtles (1, 2 and 3) of breed B;
the turtle 0 has an attribute named "number-of-links" that equals 3.
Now, let one of the 3 neighbors of 0 dies..
How can I program turtle 0 to change its number-of-links automatically to 2?
If all you want is a way of keeping track of the number links, use count my-links instead of a custom variable.
In general, the least bug prone way of having a value update when the number of links changes is to compute that value when you need it. For number of links, this is simply count my-links. For more complicated things, wrap them in a reporter:
to-report energy-of-neighbors
report sum [ energy ] of link-neighbors
end
If this doesn't work for whatever reason (agents need to react to a link disappearing or you're seeing a serious, measurable performance hit from calculating on the fly), you'll have to make the updates yourself when the number of links change. The best way to do this is to encapsulate the behavior in a command:
to update-on-link-change [ link-being-removed ] ;; turtle procedure
; update stuff
end
and then encapsulate the things that can cause the number of links to change (such as turtle death) in commands as well:
to linked-agent-death ;; turtle procedure
ask links [
ask other-end [ update-on-link-change myself ]
]
die
end