Some links from today and yesterday of probable use:
… and TDD is wonderful. Links of use from today’s unit testing efforts:
… er, and that’s it: have referenced previous links prior. There was a good link I was using at home yesterday that I need to dig out. But this link: http://www.awaretek.com/tutorials.html seemed to have a bunch of interesting stuff in it, including using links to TDD approaches.
After last night’s coding session, where I refactored the TCA simulation into something reasonable, now going through the process of documenting the code, as did not exactly do a top-drawer job last night …. whoops. This page is excellent though on coding standards for Python: http://jaynes.colorado.edu/PythonGuidelines.html.
And then: onto Unit testing!!! In a bid to try and produce some code that is reliable going forwards. (Yes, doing this back to front I know, but noob at work here !)
Right, been spending the last few days coding a 1d TCA .. and have now got to the point of concluding vs. 1 of model *works* but is pretty nasty … so will probably cut version 2 later this evening.
I need to start putting unit tests in as well, to give me some faith in what is happening …
Following this morning’s efforts, redoubled the attack on Excel. And it didn’t really work.
It is now apparent that trying to simulate a TCA in Excel only is beyond* me.But the exercise was not a wasted effort, as I have still learnt a small bit about 1d TCAs.
However,the issue is now where to go next. Options include:
Next steps will be to work out what I’m actually looking to do, then pick the tool ….
* currently
Oh the joys of implementing something straight forward in a tool that doesn’t easily resolve to the desired design!
Trying to get the TCA model up and running in Excel: still failing.
Will leave for now and attempt again later today. I think a re-read of the MSDN blog on GoL will be very sensible (http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2007/11/02/iteration-conway-s-game-of-life.aspx)
… and it is going slowly …
Using the rules found on this page in Excel (http://www.thp.uni-koeln.de/~as/Mypage/traffic.html), but without VBA currently. I can’t see an easy way of producing rule #2 distance without VBA currently, but hoping that sleeping on it + inspiraton will produce something of use (http://www.cpearson.com/excel/ArrayFormulas.aspx) …. or offset, index, match maybe? (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/152407)
UPDATE: will a combination of min, column with a constant look ahead range dependent on Vmax work?
Some other links of possible use:
Off to cook the Missus a steak sarnie for dinner !
Trying out the multi-agent simulation using my new found favourite website (Multiagent System via http://people.revoledu.com/kardi/tutorial/index.html) in Excel …. still ruminating on the results and how to take this forwards…..
In the meantime, some info:
Trying to follow the Excel CA tutorial I found on MSDN the other day … but haven’t quite cracked it. Tomorrow!
Stumbled across a page with a number of interesting tutorials on it http://people.revoledu.com/kardi/tutorial/Excel/index.html including things like solving ODE’s, kernel regression, etc., mostly from within Excel (from the looks of things). Interestingly the author for his thesis looked into pedestrian simulations, and does mention CAs (http://people.revoledu.com/kardi/publication/Dissertation.pdf).
Tried to get a number of Python-based CA’s working, but irritatingly can’t get the PIL imaging library to work with v2.6 of Python on Win XP, due to MS C compiler used to compile either Python or PIL …. great. Managed to find a number of CA’s though.
NB Saw Paramics mentinoed somewhere before — they make microsimulation software: http://www.paramics-online.com/.
PS Go look at this chaps website as it could have some things of use on it ! http://www.maerivoet.org/index.php?page=phdresearch-dissertation
NB2 Not sure if this will have some useful Excel-like links in it: http://wofford-ecs.org/IntroComputationalScience/preface.htm
What I need to find out is: what is the difference between Mathematica and Matlab?
