Focal agent (simulation component)

This component is concerned with selecting the focal agent (i.e. the agent who sends their attribute value) at each timestep in the simulation run.

The following methods are available:

Random Selector

focal_agent_sim module

defSim.focal_agent_sim.focal_agent_sim.select_focal_agent(network: networkx.classes.graph.Graph, realization: str, agents: List[int] = [], **kwargs) → int

This function works as a factory method for the FocalAgentSelector component. It calls the select_agent function of a specific implementation of the FocalAgentSelector and passes to it the kwargs dictionary.

Parameters

network – A NetworkX object from which the focal agent will be selected
realization – The specific FocalAgentSelector that shall be used to sample the focal agent. Options are “random”, …
agents – A list of the indices of all agents in the network.

:returns The index of the focal agent in the network.

Abstract Base Class (ABC)

class defSim.focal_agent_sim.focal_agent_sim.FocalAgentSelector(**kwargs)

Bases: abc.ABC

This class is responsible for sampling the focal agent for the influence process.

__init__(**kwargs)

Parameters: kwargs – This dictionary contains all the implementation-specific parameters.

abstract select_agent(agents: List[int] = []) → int

This method selects an agent from a network for the influence process. Based on the communication regime, the selected agent is either the source or the target of influence.

Parameters

network – A NetworkX object from which the agent shall be selected.
agents – A list of the indices of all agents in the network

:returns The index of the selected agent.