So that's it for unit 8 in Introduction to Agent Based Modelling

where we kind of took you through a couple of vignettes

related to the history of agent based modelling

now I want to just reiterate what I said at the very beginning

This is one particular take on different factors that influence

agent based modelling

There are definitely some elements that we've left out of this story

that if you are really interested in, I would recommend that you look into

Probably most notably, the history of individual

based modelling from the ecological systems

literature and more recent work on artificial life

Most of the stories we've told here kind of end about the time

that agent based modelling starts to take off - late '90's, early 2000

but there has been history since then, obviously

so looking into some of that would be interesting as well

as a quick wrap-up, to remind you that we've talked about things like cellular automata

and its effect on building up this idea that you have this kind of quick rose

and they interact with each other.

we've talked about genetic algorithms and adaptive agents

this idea that agents don't have to take the same actions,

given past history that they've seen

we've talked about Logo and its direct impact on NetLogo

but also on, in general the idea of synthetic body reasoning

and the idea that you can think of yourself as an agent when you

build an agent based model

that helps you to build the model and to understand

a model that someone else has built for you.

Object Oriented Programming and the notions

about encapsulating methods and data within a single class or object of an entity

and then parallelism and the idea that you can have

multiple agents moving simultaneously

particle systems, where you have the first notions

of the idea that you can

simulate the many different actions by looking at their

emergent properties, how they interact

you see something different than what you see

when you look at one individual entity

so there's a rich history here

it's not a linear history

it's a not-so-linear interacting web of stories that

come together to create a lot of the stuff that

we talk about when we talk about

agent-based modelling

I hope that you've enjoyed this brief -

way too brief tour and that you understand

a little bit more about some of the places that

agent-based modelling comes out of.

Thanks.