Short Courses on Designing Experiments with Software Agents and Human Agents:

DATE

TIME

Speaker

Title

Nov. 13

13:40~17:00

Hiroshi Deguchi, Manabu Ichikawa, and Hideki Tanuma

Tokyo Institute of Technology

Tutorial on SOARS

Nov. 14

13:30~14:30

Sobei Oda

Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan

Keynote Speech on Experimental Economics

14:45~17:00

Chung-Ching Tai

Tunghai University

Bin-Tzong Chie

Tamkang University

Tutorial on z-Tree and NetLogo

¡P         Tutorial on Social Simulation with SOARS

¡§How to make a social simulation model by SOARS¡¨

Hiroshi Deguchi and Manabu Ichikawa (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)

SOARS -Spot Oriented Agent Role Simulator- is a new type agent based simulation language, which requires no skills of programming languages. This simulation language is designed for everyone to use easy and what all you have to do to use it is to study few hours to get some basic skills for modeling. SOARS also supports making web based a simulation of gaming. For gaming creators, SOARS helps you to make computer based gaming easily. To get more information about SOARS, please see SOARS Project Official Website, http://www.soars.jp.

In this tutorial, we are going to introduce the history, the concept and some social simulation models of SOARS, and also teach how to make a social simulation model by SOARS. We are planning to make a very basic model, which we called ¡§family model¡¨. In this model, daily activities of members of a family are represented and it enables to simulate their daily life. We all hope you to have more interests in SOARS by taking this tutorial.

Please bring a laptop with you for this tutorial. SOARS supports Windows XP, Vista, MacOS X, Linux

download pre tutorial materials: English version    Chinese version

¡P         Keynote Speech on Experimental Economics

 ¡§Moving Viewpoint: what makes human subjects different from computer agents¡¨

Sobei Oda (Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan)

Humans observe themselves and others from various viewpoints. This fact has been mentioned in various fields. The results of the Sally-Ann Test (Wimmer and Perner 1983) show that most children sufficiently old can make inferences from another person's viewpoint. Adam Smith (1759) emphasised that humans take the impartial spectator's viewpoint to judge what they themselves and others should do. The Self-projection theory (Bucker and Carroll 2007) claims that humans move their viewpoint freely in the time-space to make decisions. Jumping out of the system (Hoffstadter 1979), or observing the system to which one belongs from the outsider's viewpoint, plays an important role in human thinking.

Such movement of human viewpoint, which is more often unconscious than not, characterises human thinking. It gives human systems such dynamic stability/predictability and instability/inpredictability that could not be seen in simulations with computer agents. I shall discuss it, referring to my current behavioural and neuroeconomic experiments of intertemporal preference. In relation to this I may also mention economics education and the scientists' viewpoint from which human behaviour is understood.

download ppt

¡P         Tutorial on z-Tree and NetLogo

Chung-Ching Tai (Tunghai University, Taiwan) and Bin-Tzong Chie (Tamkang University, Taiwan)

z-Tree (Zurich Toolbox for Readymade Experiments) was developed by Urs Fischbacher at the University of Zurich in 2000. z-Tree is designed to enable the economic experiments without much prior experience. Experimenters are allowed to define and conduct economic and social experiments. 

NetLogo is a cross-platform multi-agent programmable modeling environment for simulating natural and social phenomena. NetLogo was authored by Uri Wilensky in 1999 and is under continuous development at the CCL (the Center for Connected Learning). NetLogo also powers the HubNet participatory simulation system. Through the use of networked computers or handheld devices, each human subject can control an agent in a simulation. 

This tutorial will give a comprehensive introduction for z-Tree and NetLogo. We will demonstrate how to conduct human subject experiments by z-Tree and develop agent-based simulations by NetLogo. The interaction between human subject and computer software agent will also be introduced under HubNet/NetLogo environment.

download NetLogo ppt    download z-Tree ppt    download z-Tree pptx   Download Z-Tree Example   download NetLogo