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Marwa's picture

Deterministic?

In class, we discussed deterministic versus non-deterministic models. Deterministic ones are those that have the same outcome every time. It follows a set of rules and thus has the same interactions when we run the model. While I was playing with Netlogo, I wrote a few simple lines of code and expected a deterministic model, but somehow got different outcomes when I was running the model multiple times. I had created 4 turtles, facing 0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees respectively in the setup function. In the go function, I asked them to move forward 1 unit, and if the patch is black, set it to yellow and turn right 90 degrees, but if it isn't, then set it black and turn left 90 degrees left. (I think that's very similar to what Kathy had shown in class). It is creating a bunch of different results and I am not sure why. There isn't any variability here – shouldn't it be doing the same thing every time? Any thoughts?

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