CSS SEMINAR – OCTOBER 9 – RUSSO

Friday, 9th October: 3.00pm

Introduction to NetLogo

Holly Russo, Department of Computational Social Science

NetLogo is a Java-based modeling environment and one of the easiest environments in which to construct an agent-based model with a rich visualization quickly.  It is also free and has extensive resources such as a huge model library full of example code and a pretty good userâ??s manual.  Many of the Computational Social Science classes you will take will require you to build an agent-based model, and usually you will have the choice of modeling environments.  NetLogo is a great option for those of you not comfortable with another language yet or even as a programming â??white boardâ?? for rapid prototyping and testing of algorithms.  However, NetLogo is also capable of some pretty sophisticated programs and provides Systems Dynamics and Social Network modeling, too.

This seminar is an introduction to NetLogo.  During the seminar, we will cover all of the basics you need to get started programming as well as tips on where to find more help and information.  We will go over the basic components of NetLogo, the format for a NetLogo program, how to set up and conduct experiments, and how to import and export files.  We will also go over the model library and userâ??s manual, both of which are priceless tools even for the experienced NetLogo programmer.  We will talk a little about different versions of NetLogo.  Finally, we will briefly discuss other extensions and advanced features of NetLogo; however,  we will not cover them in any great depth.

This seminar is for those who are completely new to NetLogo or who have only built a couple of programs.  Other more experienced students, although welcome to attend, will not likely benefit much from this seminar but may appreciate the refresher.  During the seminar, I will collect the email addresses of attendees, in order to send out soft copies of the slides used in the presentation.  We will look mostly at models from the model library so you â?? armed with the slides from our discussion â?? can explore the models on your own time.   I will also show you one or two of the more sophisticated models that I have built in the past, so you get a feel for what is possible in NetLogo, and email the models (with code) to you after the seminar.