An animal movement simulator inspired by University of Minnesota biologist Donald 
B. Siniff's Program SIMPLOT, 1967.

Siniff's goal was to gain a better understanding of how and why patterns of animal 
movement differed from species to species and from time to time. His effort was closely
tied to the development of a groundbreaking automatic wildlife radio-tracking system at
the Cedar Creek Natural History Area. 

My goal in writing this program was to better understand why wildlife biologists in
the 1960s approached the study of animal behavior and ecology the way they did. I also
wanted to provide a playful, interactive way for others to get a feel for the practices 
and aesthetics of the wildlife biology of that time.

The simulation logic and aesthetic of this version are modeled as closely as possible on
the original version, as described in Siniff's 1967 dissertation:

	Donald Blair Siniff. (1967). A simulation model of animal movement patterns. Ph.D. 
	thesis, University of Minnesota.

However, the coding language (Javascript, with an assist from Python, vs.  FORTRAN), 
input interface (web browser vs. punch cards) and output medium (HTML5 Canvas on screen 
vs. vector plotter on paper) are quite a bit different. 

Running example at: 
http://etiennebenson.com/simplot/


FILES:
core:
* simplot.js -- javascript for controls, simulation, and plotting
* simplot.html -- html code for controls and canvas
* simplot.css -- styling

extra:
* angle-dists.py -- python hack ... er, code to generate circular normal (Von Mises) 
	distributions that are hard-coded into simplot.js and appear as drop-down 
	menu options in the app under "probability distributions". python was used because
	the von mises distribution is included as part of the standard "random" library

required libraries:
* jquery
* jquery-ui
* jquery-sparkline


browser requirements:
* HTML5 Canvas support



Copyright (C) Etienne S. Benson, esbenson@gmail.com

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.