Courses/CS 461/Winter 2006/Justin Padilla/Week 1

[edit] Tutorial 1

The setup button can be used even while the model is running.
The random placement of the wolves/sheep causes slightly different results using the same settings, but never drastic changes.
The wolf-sheep predation model begins with a majority of sheep, and by 100 ticks the population drops to almost 1/5 that of wolves. By about 250 time ticks the wolves have consumed all the sheep and soon die off.
When grass is added, the population stabilizes with grass highest, then sheep, then wolves fluctuating relatively little.
When the initial wolves count is less, a surprising phenomonon occurs where the wolves population rapidly grows and eventually consumes the sheep. This is not what would be expected since the sheep have such a head start at first.
When the sheep reproduction is increased, they multiply so rapidly that the simulation slows down. I did not even reach 100 time ticks before it was running so slow I stopped it. The wolf population steadily increased because of the constant supply of food.
The slider controls ticks per second, the red arrow turns shapes on and off, and the on/off switch turns the graphic display of the model off, though the simulation is still ongoing.
The remainder of the controls are good for resizing the field.

When there is no slow down, the cars eventually find an equilibrium and all reach the max speed quickly. At this point, the slow down no longer matters because the cars are all going the same speed.
To this model, I feel an interesting addition would be a deceleration distance, and deceleration speed. Just as in normal traffic, these cars would avoid accidents by slowing down before they collide with other cars. Then you could create a monitor to track collisions.
I found it interesting to use the observer bar to edit the patch and turtle colors. The setup button returns everything to normal again.
The turtle and patch monitors are useful to find out and edit information regarding the turtles and patches.