random-walk

About random-walk

random-walk is a simple, interactive simulation of two-dimensional Random Walks, which is built using pygame in Python. It is a graphical-user interface based project.

Date of creation: 11 August, 2021

Features

class walk.Walker

A class Walker is defined in the module walk.py. This models the dots that perform the walk on the screen.

Other features

The following features are provided in the simualtor:

• Ability to change the number of simulations and blocks of the walk
• Ability to view the number of walkers in a neighbourhood
• Ability to toggle the visibility of the walkers' tracks
• Ability to toggle the visibility of the walkers' position vectors
• Generation of logs

Edit the logging settings

To modify the level of the logger, modify:

logging.basicConfig(
    filename="random-walk.log", level=logging.INFO, format=LOG_FORMAT
)

on Line 47 of main.py to:

logging.basicConfig(
   filename="random-walk.log", level=LEVEL, format=LOG_FORMAT
)

where LEVEL can be one of:

• logging.INFO
• logging.DEBUG
• logging.WARNING
• logging.ERROR
• logging.CRITICAL

Edit the number of simulations and blocks

To edit the number of simulations of the random-walk, change Line 28 of main.py to

# number of random walks to perform (Walkers)
SIMLULTIONS: int = X

where X is your desired number of simulations.

To edit the number of blocks of the random-walk, change Line 31 of main.py to

# number of blocks to perform random walks for
BLOCKS: int = Y

where Y is your desired number of blocks for the random-walk.

Note that a large number of walkers and blocks is recommended for a good analysis.

Controls

• Left-click (anywhere on the grid): Display the co-ordinates of that Point
• Right-click (anywhere on the grid): Display the number of Walkers within a Euclidean distance of √2 unit(s) of that Point
• Enter: Advance the Random Walk
• A: Toggle the automation the Random Walk
• L: Log the current state of the Walkers into the log file
• T: Toggle the visibility of the tails (last 50 positions visited) of the Walkers
• V: Toggle the visibility of the Walkers' position Vectors

Run

To run, clone the repository on your device, navigate to the folder, and execute:

python3 main.py

Future plans

• The plot of final positions of the Walkers can be changed to a heat-map based on distance
• A heat-map of the total number of times a point on the grid is visited
• Addition of a GUI starting-window that takes the number of walkers and the number of blocks as input
• The ability to switch off backtracking