Master of Business Analytics: BA 3003 - Computational Social Science

MASTER OF BUSINESS ANALYTICS
BA 3003 – Computational Social Science
8 – NetLogo Programming
Ruvan Weerasinghe
<arw@ucsc.cmb.ac.lk>
UNIVERSITY OF COLOMBO SCHOOL OF COMPUTING

Main concepts and constructs
• Agents
• Procedures
• Variables
• Lists
• Ask
• Output/Files
Master of Business Analytics 26 September 2020 2

• Agents
• Procedures
• Variables
• Lists
• Ask
• Output/Files

Agents
• The NetLogo world is made up of agents
• Agents are beings that can follow instructions
• Four types of agents
• turtles, patches, links, and the observer
• Turtles are agents that move around in the world:
• i.e. a two dimensional grid of patches
• Links are agents that connect two turtles or patches
• The observer can look over the whole world
• can also give instructions to other agents (not just observe!)

Agents (contd.)
• When NetLogo starts up, there are no turtles
• The observer can make new turtles
• Patches can also make new turtles
• Though they can’t move, they’re just as ‘alive’ as turtles
• They have coordinates pxcor and pycor
• The total number of patches is determined by min-pxcor, max-
pxcor, min-pycor and max-pycor (-16, 16, -16, 16 by default)
• i.e. 33x33 or 1089 patches in total
• Turtles also have coordinates xcor and ycor – but they can be
decimals – i.e. not necessarily at the center of the patch they’re on
• Links do not have coordinates but have two ends – if a turtle at
either end dies, the link dies too

Agentsets
• This is a set of agents
• Of only one type: turtles, patches or links
• It has no order (as they are sets!)
• Each time it is used, it is in a different random order!
• turtles, patches and links are primitive agentsets!
• We can define subsets of these for solving problems
• e.g. all the red turtles, or the patches with pxcor evenly divisible by
five, or the turtles in the first quadrant that are on a green patch or the
links connected to turtle 0
• Using turtles-here, turtles-at or turtles-on to get the
set of turtles standing on a given patch or set of patches, or the set of
turtles standing on the same patch as a given turtle or set of turtles

Agentsets (contd.)
NB: use of other to
exclude this agent
Examples of different types of agentsets

Agentsets (contd.)
• Use of defined agentsets
• Use ask to make the agents in the agentset do something
• Use any? to see if the agentset is empty
• Use all? to see if every agent in an agentset satisfies a
condition
• Use count to find out how many agents are in the set
• Pick a random agent from the set using one-of
• e.g. ask one-of turtles [ set color green ]
• Tell a randomly chosen patch to sprout a new turtle
• e.g. ask one-of patches [ sprout 1 ]

Agentsets (contd.)
• Use of defined agentsets (contd.)
• Use the max-one-of or min-one-of reporters to find
out which agent is the most or least along some scale
• e.g. ask max-one-of turtles [sum assets] [ die ]
• Make a histogram of the agentset using the histogram
command (in combination with of)
• Use of to make a list of values, one for each agent in the
agentset. Then use one of NetLogo’s list primitives to do
something with the list
• e.g. to find out how rich turtles are on the average:
show mean [sum assets] of turtles

Agentsets (contd.)
• Use of defined agentsets (contd.)
• Use turtle-set, patch-set and link-set
reporters to make new agentsets by gathering together
agents from a variety of possible sources
• Use no-turtles, no-patches and no-links
reporters to make empty agentsets
• Check whether two agentsets are equal using = or !=
• Use member? to see whether a particular agent is a
member of an agentset

Special agentsets
• The agentsets turtles
and links have special
behavior
• As they always hold the sets
of all turtles and all links
• See interaction shown (with
globals [g] defined)
• The turtles agentset grows
when new turtles are born, but other agentsets don’t grow. Writing
turtle-set turtles, gets a new, normal agentset containing
just the turtles that currently exist. Then new turtles don’t join when
they’re born

Special agentsets (contd.)
• Breed agentsets are special in the same way as
turtles and links
• If you need agents in your agentset to do something
in a fixed order, you need to make a list of the
agents first
• Since otherwise the agentset will be in a random order

Breeds
• Can create agent types using breeds keyword
• Only turtle and link types
• Then give them different behaviors
• Breeds defined later appear on top of those defined earlier
• When defined a new agentset with its capabilities is created
• e.g. for a new breed called sheep, the following primitives are
automatically available: create-sheep, hatch-sheep,
sprout-sheep, sheep-here, sheep-at, sheep-on, and
is-a-sheep?.
• Can also define new sheep variables using sheep-own
• Can test a breeds type using the
breed turtle variable
Breeds (contd.)
• Who numbers are assigned
irrespective of breeds
• If you already have a frog 0,
the first mouse will be mouse 1,
not mouse 0, since the who
number 0 is already taken
• Try this code out and inspect the
who numbers of the resulting
mice and frogs

Link Breeds
• When you declare a link breed you must declare
whether it is a breed of directed or undirected
• e.g. directed-link-breed [streets street]
undirected-link-breed [friendships friendship]
• The following primitives become available for directed breeds:
create-street-from, create-streets-from, create-
street-to, create-streets-to, in-street-neighbor? , in-
street-neighbors, in-street-from, my-in-streets, my-
out-streets, out-street-neighbor? , out-street-
neighbors and out-street-to
• For undirected breeds the following become available:
create-friendship-with , create-friendships-with ,
friendship-neighbor?, friendship-neighbors ,
friendship-with and my-friendships

Links
• Link primitive names indicate what kind of links they
deal with
• Primitives that have ‘out’ in their name utilize outgoing and
undirected links
• Primitives that have ‘in’ in their name utilize incoming and
undirected links
• Primitives that do not specify ‘in’ or ‘out’, or have ‘with’ in
their name utilize all links, both undirected and directed,
incoming and outgoing

Links (contd.)
• If the link is directed, it goes from end1 to end2
• If the link is undirected, end1 is always the older of the two
turtles, that is, the turtle with the smaller who number
• Links most importantly support the
representation of networks
• The simplest primitive is layout-
circle which evenly spaces the
agents around the center of the world
given a radius

Links (contd.)
• The layout-radial is a good layout if you have
something like a tree structure (can have cycles too)
• Takes a root agent to be in the center
at (0,0)
• Nodes one degree away from the root
will be arranged in a circular pattern
around the central node and the next
level around those nodes and so on

Links (contd.)
• Given a set of anchor nodes layout-tutte
places all the other nodes at the center of
mass of the nodes it is linked to
• The anchor set is automatically arranged
in a circle layout with a user defined radius
and the other nodes will converge into place

Patch Topology
• By default the world is a torus – which means it isn’t
bounded, but ‘wraps’ at the edges
• i.e. when a turtle moves past the edge of the world, it
disappears and reappears on the opposite edge
• Can change the wrap settings with the Settings button
• If wrapping is not allowed in a given direction then in that
direction (x or y) the world is bounded
• Patches along that boundary will have fewer than 8 neighbors
• Turtles will not move beyond the edge of the world

Patch Topology (contd.)
• Four topologies available:
• torus, box, vertical cylinder, or horizontal
cylinder
• Torus – wraps in both directions
• Box – doesn’t wrap in either direction
• Horizontal and vertical cylinders wrap in one direction but
not the other
• A horizontal cylinder wraps vertically, so the top of the world is
connected to the bottom
• A vertical cylinder is the opposite; it wraps horizontally so the left
and right edges are connected, but the top and bottom edges are
bounded

• Agents
• Procedures
• Variables
• Lists
• Ask
• Output/Files

• Agents
• Procedures
• Variables
• Lists
• Ask
• Output/Files

Procedures
• There are 2 types of procedures
• Commands and Reporters
• Commands are actions for agents to carry out
• They result in some effect
• They are named using verbs such as ‘create’, ‘die’, ‘jump’,
‘inspect’, or ‘clear’
• Reporters are instructions for computing some value
• An agent reports such values to whoever who asked
• Reporter names are nouns or noun phrases

Procedures (contd.)
• Built-in procedures are called primitives
• Full list: https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/dictionary.html
• User-defined commands and reporters are called
procedures
• They have names that are preceded by the keyword to or
to-report depending on their type
• Both types are ended using the keyword end
• Many commands and reporters take inputs (arguments)

Procedures (contd.)
• Exercise
• What are setup and go?
• Procedures
• What are clear-all,
create-turtles,
reset-ticks, ask, lt,
rt and tick?
• Primitive commands
• What are random and turtles?
• Primitive reporters
• NB: setup and go can be called by other procedures, by
buttons on the UI or from the Command Center

Procedures (contd.)
• You may specify which agents – turtles, patches, or
links – are to run each command
• If not, the code is run by the observer
• In the example code, the observer uses ask to make the set
of all turtles run the commands between the square brackets
• clear-all and create-turtles can only be run by
the observer
• fd can only be run by turtles
• set and ticks can be run by different agent types

Procedures (contd.)
• Procedures can take input by specifying them within
square brackets
• This example turtle procedure
can be called elsewhere as:
ask turtles [ draw-polygon 8 who ]
• Which draws an octagon with a side length of its who

number
• Reporters behave similarly
• But are defined using
to-report instead of just to
• Need to specify value to return using report keyword
Anonymous Procedures
• Anonymous procedures store code to be run later
• Can be (anonymous) command or (anonymous) reporter
• They are values, so they may be passed as input, reported
as a result, or stored in a variable
• Known as lambda functions or closures in other langauges
• Primitive anonymous procedures include:
• ->, is-anonymous-command?, and is-
anonymous-reporter?
• -> creates an anonymous procedure: command or reporter

Anonymous Procedures (contd.)
• Anonymous commands and reporters
• [ -> fd 1 ] is an anonymous command, while
[ -> count turtles ] is an anonymous reporter
• They require anonymous procedures as input: foreach,
map, reduce, filter, n-values, sort-by
• Using -> is optional if anonymous procedure contains a single
primitive which requires no more inputs than are are provided by
the primitive
• e.g. foreach mylist [[x] -> print x] can be replaced by
foreach mylist print (but both forms are accepted)
• The run command and runresult reporter accept
anonymous commands and reporters as well as strings
• An anonymous procedure may take zero or more inputs
• The inputs are referenced the variables declared before the
arrow
• e.g. in anon reporter [[a b] -> a + b], a and b are inputs
New syntax
Old syntax

• Omitting parts of anonymous procedure syntax

• Agents
• Procedures
• Variables
• Lists
• Ask
• Output/Files

• Agents
• Procedures
• Variables
• Lists
• Ask
• Output/Files

Variables
• Two main types: agent and local
• An agent variable can be:
• global variable, a turtle variable, a patch variable, or a link
variable
• A global agent variable has only 1 value for all agents
• Each turtle, patch or link has its own value for every non-
global agent variable
• Built-in variables exist and for patches begin with ‘p’
• e.g. color, xcor, ycor, pcolor, pxcor, pycor etc.
• Complete list: https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/dictionary.html#builtinvariables

Variables (contd.)
• User-defined variables need to be declared
• You can define a global variable by adding a switch, slider,
chooser, or input box to your model, or by using the
globals keyword in your code
• e.g. globals [score]
• You can define new turtle, patch and link variables using
the turtles-own, patches-own and links-own
keywords
• e.g. turtles-own [energy speed]
patches-own [friction]
links-own [strength]

Variables (contd.)
• These variables can be used throughout your code
• Use the set command to set them
• Any variable you don’t set has a starting value of zero
• Global variables can be read and set at any time by any
agent
• A turtle can read and set patch variables of the patch it is
standing on
• e.g. ask turtles [ set pcolor red ]
• To read a different agent’s variable, you can use of:
• e.g. show [color] of turtle 5
Other turtle’s
who number

Variables (contd.)
• A more complicated
use of the of keyword
• Local variables are only defined within a particular
procedure
• Define using let keyword
• Exists only within the
procedure or within the
context of a square bracket
within which it is defined
• e.g. ask turtle [ let color [color] of turtle 5]

• Agents
• Procedures
• Variables
• Lists
• Ask
• Output/Files

• Agents
• Procedures
• Variables
• Lists
• Ask
• Output/Files

Lists
• Lists let you store multiple pieces of information in a
single variable
• Can be a number, a string, an agent or agentset, or even
another list
• If your agents carry out a repetitive calculation on multiple
variables, it might be easier to have a list variable, instead
of multiple number variables
• Simplest type are constant lists
• e.g. set mylist1 [2 4 6 8]
set mylist2 [[2 4] [3 5]]
• An empty list is given by [ ]

Lists (contd.)
• To make a list in which the values are built on the fly (as
opposed to being constants), use the list reporter
• It accepts two other reporters, runs them, and reports the results as a
list: e.g. set random-list list (random 10) (random 20)
- this will create a new list of two random integers each time it runs
• For longer lists you can use list within parenthesis:
(list random 10 random 20 random 30)
• Some kinds of lists are best built using the n-values
reporter, which allows you to construct a list of a specific
length by repeatedly running a given reporter
• e.g. n-values 5 [ i -> i ] creates a list of [0 1 2 3 4] while
n-values 5 [ x -> x * x ] creates a list of [0 1 4 9 16]

Lists (contd.)
• Can combine two or more lists using the sentence
reporter for concatenation
• e.g. sentence 1 2 gives [ 1 2 ]
sentence 1 [2 3] gives [ 1 2 3 ]
sentence [1 2] [3 4] gives [ 1 2 3 4 ]
sentence [[1 2]] [[3 4]] gives [[1 2] [3 4]]
(sentence [1 2] 3 [4 5] (3 + 3)) gives [1 2 3 4 5 6]
• Lists can’t be modified (immutable), but you can construct
new lists based on old lists
The replace-item reporter
takes three inputs: pos of item
to be replaced, the list name
and the value of replacement

Lists (contd.)
• To add an item, say 42, to the end of a list, use the lput
reporter (fput adds an item to the beginning of a list)
• e.g. set mylist lput 42 mylist gives the new mylist as
[2 7 10 Bob [3 0 -2] 42]
• The but-last (bl for short) reporter reports all the list
items but the last
• e.g. set mylist but-last mylist gives back the new
mylist as [2 7 10 Bob [3 0 -2]]
• Try but-first as an exercise!
• Can also replace nested items:
• e.g. what does the following do: set mylist (replace-item 3
mylist (replace-item 2 (item 3 mylist) 9))

Lists (contd.)
• To run some operation on each item in a list in turn we use
• e.g. foreach [1 2 3] show
• foreach [1 2 3] [steps -> ask turtles [fd steps]]

will make the turtles move forward 6 patches
• foreach [true false true true] [ should-move? ->
ask turtles [ if should-move? [ fd 1 ] ] ] will make
turtles move forward 3 patches

Lists (contd.)
• map is like foreach but is a reporter and takes an input list
and a reporter name or reporter block
• e.g. set mylist map round [1.2 2.2 2.7] gives
mylist the value [ 1 2 3 ]
• Using anonymous procedures as before we can do
• Other primitive procedures for handling lists include:

• filter, reduce, and sort-by
• In addition you can use control flow with repeat or while

Lists (contd.)
• Since agentsets are randomly ordered we can use lists to
order them if needed using sort and sort-by
• If you use sort on an agentset of turtles, the result is a list of
turtles sorted in ascending order by who number
• If you use sort on an agentset of patches, the result is a list of
patches sorted left-to-right, top-to-bottom
• If you use sort on an agentset of links, the result is a list of links,
sorted in ascending order first by end1 then by end2 any
remaining ties are resolved by breed in the order they are declared
in the Code tab
• If you need descending order instead, you can combine reverse
with sort, for example reverse sort turtles

Lists (contd.)
• Since agentsets are randomly ordered we can use lists to
order them if needed using sort and sort-by (contd.)
• To sort by something other than the who number it needs to be
explicitly specified – e.g.
sort-by [[a b] -> [size] of a < [size] of b]
turtles
• This returns a list of turtles sorted in ascending order by their turtle
variable size
• Once you have a list of
agents, you might want to ask
them each to do something
• Use the foreach and ask commands in combination
• This will ask each turtle in ascending order by who number
• Agents
• Procedures
• Variables
• Lists
• Ask
• Output/Files

• Agents
• Procedures
• Variables
• Lists
• Ask
• Output/Files

Ask
• NetLogo uses the ask command to give commands
to turtles, patches, and links
• All code to be run by turtles must be located in a
turtle ‘context’, established by:
• a button, by choosing ‘Turtles’ from the popup menu: any
code you put in the button will be run by all turtles
• the Command Center, by choosing ‘Turtles’ from popup:
any commands you enter will be run by all the turtles
• using ask turtles, hatch, or other commands which
establish a turtle context

Ask (contd.)
• Any code that is not inside any ask is by default
observer code
• When ask is used with an agentset each agent will
take its turn in a random order

Ask (contd.)
• Usually the observer uses
ask to ask all turtles, all
patches or all links to run
commands
• Can also use ask to have an
individual turtle, patch or
link run commands
What do these ask
commands achieve?

Ask (contd.)
• The turtle primitive reporter takes a who number as an
input, and reports the turtle with that who number
• The patch primitive reporter takes values for pxcor and
pycor and reports the patch with those coordinates
• The link primitive takes two inputs, the who numbers of the
two turtles it connects
• And the patch-at primitive reporter takes offsets: distances,
in the x and y directions, from the first agent
• You can also select a subset of turtles, or a subset of patches,
or a subset of links and ask them to do something

Ask (contd.)
• When you ask a set of agents to run more than one command,
each agent must finish before the next agent starts
• In this example, first one turtle
moves and turns red, then another
turtle moves and turns red, and so on
• In this example first all the turtles

move, then they all turn red

• Agents
• Procedures
• Variables
• Lists
• Ask
• Output/Files

• Agents
• Procedures
• Variables
• Lists
• Ask
• Output/Files

Output
• The main output in NetLogo is to the screen
• Output to the screen can also be later saved to a file
using the export-output command
• Basic output commands are:
• print, show, type, and write
• print is useful in most situations
• show lets you see which agent is printing what
• type lets you print several things on the same line
• write lets you print values in a format which can be read back in
using file-read

Output (contd.)
• The print, show, type, and write primitives
differ on the following facets:
• What types of values does the primitive accept?
• Does the primitive output a newline at the end?
• Are strings output with quotes surrounding them?
• Does the primitive output the agent which printed it?

File I/O
• Primitives for interacting with outside files
• Begin with the prefix file-
• Two modes: read and write
• Start with file-open
• Then use file-read, file-read-line, file-read-
characters, and file-at-end?
• Writing primitives are: file-print, file-show, file-
type, and file-write
• Files will never be overwritten but always appended to
• After use need to give command file-close
• Files can be deleted using the command file-delete

File I/O
• Typical usage example
• The user-directory, user-file, and user-new-

file primitives are useful when you want the user to
choose a file or directory for your code to operate on

Programming in NetLogo
• Full syntax available at:

https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/programming.html

Master of Business Analytics: BA 3003 - Computational Social Science

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MASTER OF BUSINESS ANALYTICS

BA 3003 – Computational Social Science

UNIVERSITY OF COLOMBO SCHOOL OF COMPUTING

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• Which draws an octagon with a side length of its who

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• foreach [1 2 3] [steps -> ask turtles [fd steps]]

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• Other primitive procedures for handling lists include:

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• In this example first all the turtles

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