A quick tutorial to getting OPTIMAES working and doing something interesting with it.Step 1Make sure you have Python installed on your machine. If you don't, I'm afraid this will take a bit longer than 5 minutes as you need to download and get Python running first. More at http://www.python.org/ Step 2Download the code in an archive file from : GetTheCode Open it Step 3Set an environment variable called OPTIMAES_ROOT to the optimaes directory containing defaultExperiment.py. Something like export OPTIMAES_ROOT=/home/yourname/optimaes/ should get you going on Linux. Step 4Open defaultExperiment.py. Check that the path in the first line, which by default is #! /usr/bin/python correctly points to Python. To find the right path in your Linux system, type which python on the command line. If it isn't "#! /usr/bin/python", change the file to the right path Step 5Run defaultExperiment.py You should see something like this ...
These are the results of running (briefly) the five different kinds of economy that currently exist in the OPTIMAES package. * SelfishForagers * GiftAgents * BarterAgents * ProfitSeekingBarterAgents * MoneyAgent Step 6Now look at the table of results in DefaultExperimentResults Choose some parameters that seem interesting but haven't been tried yet. Edit defaultExperiment.py to use them. Run defaultExperiment.py again ... Step 7Add the results you got to those on DefaultExperimentResults CongratulationsYou've just contributed something original to the sum of human knowledge ... If it didn't workI know it's ugly. I'm working on some better instructions etc. But if this didn't work for you ... * You can ReportBugs * Or tell me your problems here ... No problem at all technically. The question is how to interpret the results. For example, how can you tell whether a difference between any pair of values is statistically significant? (I assume a random number generator is used in the simulation so some differences will occur randomly.) -- SJ : See ScientificCriticism Also not a problem, instead a suggestion (which, of course, you are free to ignore). Modifying the sample python script to have use "#!/usr/bin/env python" instead of "#!/usr/bin/python". That would allow it to run unmodified on systems with a python in a different place (but in $PATH). Also sys.path could be modified in the script to automatically add the library subdirectories (that will only work when the script is run from within its own directory - but that should be the case for a first user trial run). -- sholden : I've made some changes to improve this in the new version -- PhilJones *Python rulez* : of course -- PhilJones |
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