The Wonderful World of Agent Based Modeling

What do flocks of birds, cars in a traffic jam, wolves and sheep, bar-goers on a Saturday night, and even molecules of gas inside a balloon have in common? All of these things can be represented equally well using Agent-Based Modeling (ABM)! By describing an environment in which agents move and do things, as well as giving the agents simple rules for behavior, we can discover many surprising and fascinating similarities in seemingly completely different processes. And all of this without solving any differential equations, calculating any probabilities, or learning any complicated laws of physics – just drag a few sliders, press play, and watch the patterns emerge! For total beginners and veteran programmers/scientists alike, Agent-Based Models offer a visual and straightforward way to play with complex systems and learn about their surprising and often counterintuitive behavior.
In my Demo, I will showcase several tools for Agent-Based Modeling including the NetLogo language and the Python Mesa package. Visitors of all ages and skill levels are welcome to come watch, play with models, and even build their own – everyone can do it! More experienced visitors can see the many ways in which Agent-Based Modeling could be applied in their own research – I will be sharing my experience of using the Mesa package in Computational Social Science.