Tullock ABM

One of the reasons I initially made contact with my Chilean collaborators was because they had published work using Agent Based Models (ABM). This is a simulation method that I've been interested in for years. I like it because ABMs tend to be good project for undergraduate applied math and my goal is to keep my research accessible to undergraduates.

I mentioned in a previous post that I was invited to work on an ABM project involving the Tullock game often studied by economists. An example of a simple Tullock game is a raffle. You can improve your chance of winning by buying more raffle tickets. But, buying more raffle tickets requires more money and that lowers your payout should you win (you have to account for the cost of the raffle tickets). There are more complicated versions of this game, but for now, a raffle is a good example. There are two economists at a local university that have collected real data from people playing a particular kind of Tullock game. They are interested in building an ABM to simulate the game. They've invited me to help calibrate and then validate an ABM simulation.

I met with them today and I think we're all agreed that I will join the team. This would give me a total of three projects: the capture/recapture probability paper, the semantic fluency work, and the Tullock game ABM. I'm going to work all of them for a while and see which is the most promising.

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Laura left Walla Walla today and went back to LA. She'll visit with Emily this evening and then start her journey back to Chile tomorrow morning out of LAX. It's LAX to Miami, Miami to Santiago, then the bus to Vina. If all goes well, I'll meet her at the bus station around midday Thu. I don't envy her the very long travel.

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I finished up the review documents for my child advocacy case and turned them into my volunteer supervisor. So far, I think working the case from Chile has gone ok. I don't like not having regular face-to-face contact with the children, but the phone calls should suffice until I get back in March. Phone calls with other people in the case, have been easy. Frankly, not that much different than if I were in Walla Walla. 

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It was warm today. Probably upwards of 80 degrees. Definitely the warmest day yet as we move into summer. I got distracted by my report writing this evening and forgot to get a sunset photo, but here's a post-sunset, dusk photo: