Re: About Multi-Agent Systems...seeking advice

[M Lang / S Railsback]

My advice would be to put a lot of thought and time into designing your
simulation before worrying about what software to implement it in. Have
you done that yet? Think about exactly what questions you want to
address, what patterns you want to explain or reproduce, what decisions
your agents make and how, what they do and don't know, etc. etc. 

Unfortunately there is not yet a lot of literature to guide people like
you in designing agent-based simulation studies. I am working on that-
from an ecology perspective but I think our book (due next year) will be
useful to people in other fields. Meanwhile, take a look at our web site
http://math.humboldt.edu/~simsys/Products.html and you will find some
papers (most of which you can download; otherwise, email me a request)
which might help you design a model AND the analyses you will perform
with it. 

You might decide to start with a simple model for which you do not need
Swarm or RePast- other platforms such as AgentSheets or EcoBeaker might
do the trick. But probably before long you will want a more flexible
tool like Swarm or RePast (or whatever is available in a year or two).

I would also encourage you to look at this paper- again it is from the
field of ecology but probably applies just as well to other fields:

Grimm, V. (1999). Ten years of individual-based modelling in ecology:
what have we learned and what could we learn in the future? Ecological
Modelling 115: 129-148.

Also look around the Swarm user web site:
http://www.swarm.org/community-links.html

And Leigh Tesfatsion's economics site:
http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/ace.htm

And as you find modeling issues to deal with, please submit them for
discussion on the Swarm modeling list: address@hidden

Steve R.

Yang Liang wrote:
> 
Hi Everyone,

   I'm a doctoral student who is looking at using multi-agent (MA) in
examining urban issues such as 
tax policies. I'm very new to this area of work and have no prior
experience with MA.My interests were 
aroused through reading several papers written on MA's application
especially in the social science 
realm.

   Is there anyone out there who has the time to share with me his/her
experience and perhaps advise 
me on how I should go about doing my first simulation? I've some
familiarity with Visual Basic and am 
currently studying Java. 

   Thank you for your time.

   Regards
   Yang
-- 
address@hidden
Lang, Railsback & Assoc.
250 California Ave., Arcata CA 95521
707-822-0453; Fax 822-1868

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