Meet the Turtles (10 min)

Turtles = Individual Agents in Your Model¶

In NetLogo, turtles represent the individual actors in whatever social system you’re studying:

Examples:

• Sociology: People in a neighborhood, members of an organization

• Economics: Individual traders, consumers, firms

• Political Science: Voters, political parties, countries

• Psychology: Individual decision-makers with different cognitive styles

Each Turtle Has Properties¶

Just like real people have characteristics, each turtle can have properties:

Built-in properties (every turtle has these):

• color - what color is this turtle?

• size - how big should this turtle appear?

• xcor and ycor - where is this turtle located?

• heading - which direction is this turtle facing?

• who - what is this turtle’s unique ID number?

Custom properties (you define these):

• age - how old is this person?

• wealth - how much money does this person have?

• opinion - what does this person believe about an issue?

• social-connections - how many friends does this person have?

Turtles Can Move, Interact, Make Decisions¶

Turtles aren’t just static dots - they can:

• Move around the world following rules

• Interact with other nearby turtles

• Make decisions based on their situation

• Change their properties over time

• Remember things that happened to them