Re: the question from a beginner

[Darren Schreiber]

Since, I have asked far more questions than I have answered on this list, I 
figured I'd take a shot this one.  I have found Swarm to be quite useful 
for the projects I have been working on:  a simulation of the emergence of 
political parties and a simulation of housing segregation  (see details at 
http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~dschreib).  And, now that I have climbed a good 
way up the learning curve, I was even able to get a simple model running 
from scratch in a single evening (5 hours programming time)  (this one's at 
http://zia.hss.cmu.edu/econ/homework00/2/cocktail.html).

To get a better idea of what others have used Swarm for, look at the 
examples on the Swarm.org website 
(http://www.swarm.org/community-links.html).  As to the question of whether 
Swarm is the "best" tool for you to use, my guidance would simply be that 
Swarm is a good tool with a pretty active user community.  Swarm is harder 
to learn than coding a model in Mathematica or Star-Logo, but I believe 
more powerful, flexible, and faster (certainly than Mathematica).  On the 
other hand, I think it is easier to get a sophisticated agent-based model 
running in Swarm than coding one yourself from scratch in another language.

On a slight tangent, I think one of the greatest strengths of Swarm is that 
there are a lot of agent-based modeling relevant conventions.  Since most 
folks learned by tinkering with some pre-existing model (e.g. Heatbugs), 
people tend to follow pretty similar patterns in writing their own 
models.  As a result, I can frequently find how I screwed up by grabbing a 
few example models and comparing them to my own.  This is certainly a major 
advantage over the ad-hoc way that most programmers writing agent-based 
models do things.  And, it has the potential scientific benefits from 
cumulation of knowledge.  Thank God I didn't have to write my own random 
number generators and I could look at others' code for ideas on a variety 
of other decisions I faced.

        Darren


P.S.   I took the liberty of moving the discussion to the swarm-modelling 
list, since it seemed more appropriate here.



At 12:26 PM 9/25/00 -0700, you wrote:
> hi,everyone:
>
>  I am a beginner.
> I want to know the power of swarm. In other words, with the swarm, which 
> simulation can I do?
> If I want to simulate one enterprise with many suppliers and customers, Is 
> it a good decision to use
> swarm? If it is not the best decision, which tools should I use?
>
> BTW, is there anybody from ASU?
>
> Thank you very much
>
> Regards
>
> Dawei Zhang
> Sep 25,2000
>
>
>
>                  ==================================
>   Swarm-Support is for discussion of the technical details of the day
>   to day usage of Swarm.  For list administration needs (esp.
>   [un]subscribing), please send a message to <address@hidden>
>   with "help" in the body of the message.

_______________________________________

           Darren Schreiber
           Attorney at Law
          Graduate Student
      Political Science, UCLA
          address@hidden
  http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~dschreib



                 ==================================
  Swarm-Modelling is for discussion of Simulation and Modelling techniques
  esp. using Swarm.  For list administration needs (esp. [un]subscribing),
  please send a message to <address@hidden> with "help" in the
  body of the message.
                 ==================================