Emergence Mini-Project

Hand-in will be threefold: You will do a presentation in class of your solution. Do not go over 10 minutes! You must check your code into SVN (instructions to follow). And you must mark that you have finished the project in the MySchool system.

Consider the following situation: Agents are seated in an auditorium listening to a brilliant lecture. At the end of the talk the applause begins, and perhaps a standing ovation ensues.

Create an agent-based model of the process of a standing ovation using Psyclone. There should be no specific rules for the emergence of a standing ovation; it should emerge as a collective behavior of individual agents following own rules. Use the following basic specification, but feel free to extend it in any way you desire:

There are 400 agents seated in the auditorium, with R rows and C seats per row. At the end of the talk each agent makes an evaluation of the lecture’s quality. The evaluation of agent seated in row i and seat j is represented by a random number 0 ≤ q_ij ≤ 1. Higher values represent higher perceived quality.

Each agent has a threshold level, T_ij, which equals the minimum quality required for the agent to stand immediately. The threshold values should be randomly assigned to each agent.

Make sure that only a portion of the audience stands immediately. In that case those who remain seated must decide whether to remain seated or to stand, and those who stand must decide to remain standing or to sit.

Let K_ij be the seat assignments which influence the agent in row i and seat j (influencing neighbors). Assume that after the initial evaluation agent seated in row i and seat will stand if, and only if, the majority of the influencing neighbors stand.

Standing ovation occurs if the model reaches a steady state with majority of the audience standing.

Implement the following status messages to be sent whenever a person changes from sitting to standing and vice versa.

Whiteboard: WBStatistics
MessageType: abms06.standingovation.person.status

Content: <PersonInfo row=”1” column=”2” standing=”true”/>

Use the above specification to investigate under what conditions standing ovation occur and the process of its emergence. The process of emergence is best studied graphically. Compare also the time it takes to reach steady state, the size of the majority (either standing or sitting), and the propensity of the model to reach a different majority state from the initial state (e.g. if the majority of the audience didn’t like the lecture but standing ovation did occur).

Start the investigation by assuming that agents are influenced by the two neighbors on either side of them and the three agents directly ahead of their current location. How is standing ovation dependent on the distribution of T_ij both in terms of the level of threshold and the spatial distribution of lower thresholds?

Repeat 1) when assuming that agents are influenced by the two neighbors on either side of them, the three agents in the row directly ahead, the five agents two rows ahead, and so on until the first row is reached. Compare the results with 1). Discuss how the standing ovation problem could be extended to model the diffusion of innovations.