Topics › Simulation

Tuesday, 10th January 2012

Simulating a demand curve

Recently, I've been watching the new microeconomics lectures at Khan Academy, which got me thinking about creating an economics simulation, something I've thought about many times. Specifically, I was wondering about how to come up with a reasonable demand curve. They always seem to be drawn as a straight line but with no justification other than simplicity.

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Thursday, 8th December 2011

Sugarscape with Canvas

Below is an implementation of the Sugarscape simulation I made using the HTML canvas. It shows a 50x50 grid with each square containing between 0 and 4 units of sugar represented with different intensities of green. There is an initial population of 200 agents (red circles) which move about and eat the sugar.

Sugarscape revisited

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Saturday, 26th November 2011

Pygame particle simulation in 3D

Below is a video of my first attempt to move my Pygame particle simulation into the third dimension (thus combining it with my Pygame 3D tutorial). I meant to write about it a while ago, but got distracted trying to work out how to display an image rotated in three dimension (for the walls). I still haven't worked it out.

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Saturday, 16th April 2011

Sex in Sugarscape

Since the last time I wrote about Sugarscape, I've made a bit of progress. The biggest improvement is the introduction of sexual reproduction. I can therefore recapitulate more of the results of the original simulation, and test a number evolutionary ideas.

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Saturday, 9th April 2011

Horse race gambling simulation

I listened to the radio this morning and the host was talking about the Grand National, which is today.

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Wednesday, 2nd February 2011

Sugarscape revisited

Screenshot of my Sugarscape simulation

I can't believe it's over a year since I last wrote about creating a Sugarscape simulation in Python and Pygame. The page attracted a fair number of views, but I suspect several visitors were looking for the teen magazine. However, at least some of the visitors were genuinely interested and a couple of weeks ago I was contacted by someone interested in recreating Sugarscape in Python.

Sugarscape with Canvas

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Thursday, 25th November 2010

Hyphae simulation

I've started work on a simulation of fungus-like hyphae, based on project I saw called Mycelium.

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Sunday, 14th November 2010

Project:

Environment Simulation

A simulation of an environment and weather system in which cells might live.

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Saturday, 13th November 2010

Game of Life in one line of Python

This is my attempt at writing Conway's Game of Life in a single line of Python (an additional line is required to define the initial array, which is empty in my example, making the code even more pointless):

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Wednesday, 14th April 2010

Solar system simulation

I was searching the net for physics simulations made in Pygame (scouting out the competition) when I found a gravity simulation. The simulation is very straightforward (and hence very good): it starts with some randomly distributed particles, which coalesce due to the force of gravity, often leading to some particles orbiting others. It is basically a simulation of how a cloud of dust can become a sun, or solar system.

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