This challenge builds off of the Neighborhood formation model. It is a model of segregation based on an experiment done by a researcher at University of Chicago in the 1950’s named Thomas Schelling. Schelling was looking into how segregated neighborhoods formed. He modeled people’s desire to live in neighborhoods based on the percentage of the neighbors who were the same as they were in the neighborhood. For example, a person might think “I could live in a neighborhood where 50% of the people don’t look like me”. What Schelling found was that if the percentage was greater than a small amount, segregated neighborhoods formed – even though individuals did not have a strong preference to live in a neighborhood where all people looked like the individual. In this model each of the turtles is either red or blue. Variable #1 is the threshold or percentage of neighbors who you want to look like you to be comfortable in the neighborhood. Variable #2 is the size of the neighborhood. Each turtle decides to move if there are not enough people in the neighborhood of the same color (thus satisfying the threshold).
The Challenge
Your challenge is to add more types of turtles and see the impact of multiple groups on neighborhood formation. This may entail adding new breeds or types of agents. You can take the model further by giving different agents different thresholds for moving. Design an experiment to see how individual preferences effect global pattern formation under these conditions. Submit a picture or a video of your entry and a link to your model in the comment section below by the end of the month! We will collect project links on April 30. 2017 and our guest judge Su Gibbs will review the entries and post the winner.
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