Splitting Behavior Space Runs

[Pradeesh]

Is it possible to split the Behavior Space runs across different sessions? For instance, assume I have 50 runs in a Behavior Space experiment. I would like to run the first 25 runs, close the application and shut down the laptop and execute the remaining 25 runs the next day. Currently there is a pause provision but I figure that it works as long as the user does not exit the NetLogo application.

The trigger for this question is a power supply failure I experienced yesterday while running a Behavior Space experiment that was estimated to take about 5 hours to complete. Usually, the power returns after 5 minutes. So I let the runs continue on laptop battery. But since power did not return even after 30 mins, I was forced to stop the experiment and exit the application which was 50% complete at that time. The problem was that the I had to re-run the experiment from the start.

I feel it will be helpful if there is some way to pause the run such that the application also stores information about all the parameter combinations that have been executed. This enables the user to restart the runs from that point even when they have to close and exit the NetLogo application.

Thanks

[aaaronb]

@Pradeesh

Is it possible to split the Behavior Space runs across different sessions? For instance, assume I have 50 runs in a Behavior Space experiment. I would like to run the first 25 runs, close the application and shut down the laptop and execute the remaining 25 runs the next day. Currently there is a pause provision but I figure that it works as long as the user does not exit the NetLogo application.

The trigger for this question is a power supply failure I experienced yesterday while running a Behavior Space experiment that was estimated to take about 5 hours to complete. Usually, the power returns after 5 minutes. So I let the runs continue on laptop battery. But since power did not return even after 30 mins, I was forced to stop the experiment and exit the application which was 50% complete at that time. The problem was that the I had to re-run the experiment from the start.

I feel it will be helpful if there is some way to pause the run such that the application also stores information about all the parameter combinations that have been executed. This enables the user to restart the runs from that point even when they have to close and exit the NetLogo application.

Hi,
The short answer is that we do not currently have such a functionality, although it could be useful. Table output is written immediately while Spreadsheet output is written only when all the runs have completed. For this reason Table output could save you having to redo time consuming runs if you are able to investigate, determine which experiments were run, and create a new experiment, or set of experiments that run the other cases.

• Aaron

[aaaronb]

In the previous response I was addressing the case where the experiment fails unexpectedly.
If you know in advance that you only want to run some parameter combinations each time you can break things into two experiments. depending on how you use the data you should be able to combine two tables by removing the header from one of them. The subexperiment syntax might be of help
https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/behaviorspace.html#subexperiment-syntax

• Aaron

[Pradeesh]

That is a good suggestion. Thanks!