Preview - Intro To Learning With Computational Models For Educators

Describing models from agent-centric perspective

On the previous page you guessed what the rules for this model might be. Now we will discuss what they are, and identify them in the code. 

 

Questions

Please answer the questions below.

You may have noticed that at the top of the model interface, it says ticks. When you click setup it will say ticks: 0, and as the model runs, the ticks will increase.  Ticks are a way of representing time in the model. So when we are describing the rules of the model, we say what happens each tick. It is also helpful to describe the rules from the perspective of the agents, in this case the trees. The rules for this model are quite simple.

Each tick from the perspective of a tree:

  • If I'm on fire (red):
    • I light all my unburnt nearest neighbors (green) on fire.
    • I burn up (turn brown)

What are the similarities and differences between the rules you guessed on the previous page and these rules?

NetLogo is designed to be “Low Threshold, No Ceiling.” This means that there is very little prerequisite knowledge needed to start using it, but there is no limit to what you can do with it once you master it.  Many scientists and professionals regularly use NetLogo for cutting-edge research (see here for a partial list of research papers employing NetLogo).

One of the ways NetLogo achieves a "Low Threshold" is by making the syntax as close to english as possible. Open up the NetLogo Code tab and try to find the code which executes the two rules described in the previous question.  (The NetLogo Code tab is the second purple bar underneath the visualization of the model). Copy and paste the code you think corresponds to each rule below. 

 

In the setup procedure of the model, there is code like this:

What would happen if you changed green to blue? Put your hypothesis without actually changing the code yet. 

Now go ahead and change green to blue in line 14 of the code. What happens when you setup the model and when you press go? Did something different than you expected happen (or not happen)? If so, explain why this small change had the effect it did.

Notes

These notes will appear on every page in this lesson so feel free to put anything here you'd like to keep track of.