Here is the current schedule of meetings, locations, readings, and topics.

The day for the next quarter has been set as Tuesday, 5-7 PM.

Next Meeting

2007-11-27

*Time: 5-7 PM
*Location: Basement of Chambers Hall
*Topic: Social Networks
*Readings: "Social Strucutre from Multiple Networks. I. Blockmodels of Roles and
Positions", Harrison C. White, Scott A. Boorman, Ronald L. Breiger, The
American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 81, No. 4. (Jan., 1976), pp. 730-780
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9602%28197601%2981%3A4%3C730%3ASSFMNI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O

Upcoming Meetings

Topics: Information Theory, Statistical Regression, Neural Networks, ABMs, Networks, Economics and Networks, Economic Self-Organization, Social Networks, Shannon's Information Theory

Past Meetings

2007-11-14

*Time: 5-7 PM
*Location: Basement of Chambers Hall
*Topic: Entropy in Linguistics, Economics, and Physics
*Readings: (1) "A simple introduction to Maximum Entropy Models for Natural Language Processing", Adwait Ratnaparkhi, May 1997, Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Technical Report, http://tiger.towson.edu/users/dknopp1/simpl-intro-to-maxent (2) Maximum entropy exchange equilibrium, Duncan K. Foley, May 2002, Work in Progress, http://homepage.newschool.edu/~foleyd/maxentexeq.pdf (3) The backwards arrow of time of the Coherent Bayesian Statistical Mechanics, Cosma Shalizi, November, 2004, http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/0410/0410063v2.pdf

2007-10-30

*Location: Basement of Chambers Hall
*Topic: Diversity and Entropy
*Readings: (1) "Information theory explanation of the fluctuation theorem, maximum entropy production and self-organized criticality in non-equilibrium stationary states", Roderick Dewar, 2003, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen., v36 p631-641, http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0305-4470/36/3/303/ (2) "Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers", Lu Hong and Scott Page, 2004, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, v101, n46, p16385-16389, http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~spage/pnas.pdf

2007-10-16

*Location: Basement of Chambers Hall
*Topic: Entropy and its Applications
*Readings: (1) John Whitfield, Complex systems: Order out of chaos, Nature, Volume 436 Number 7053, p905, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7053/full/436905a.html (2) H. Van Dyke Parunak, Sven Brueckner: Entropy and self-organization in multi-agent systems. Agents 2001: 124-130, http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/378331.html

Summer of 2007

*Location: Prairie Moon
*Reading: Martin Nowak's Evolutionary Dynamics

2007-6-27

*Location: Prairie Moon, 1502 Sherman Ave.
*Topic: What is Evolution?
*Reading: Chapters 1 "Introduction" & 2 "What Evolution Is" from Martin
Nowak's Evolutionary Dynamics.

2007-6-20

*Location: Cozy Noodle, 1018 Davis St.
*Topic: Learning and Graphical Models
*First Reading: "Inferring Cellular Networks Using Probabilistic Graphical Models", Nir Friedman, Science, 2004, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/303/5659/799
*Second Reading: "An Introduction to Variational Methods for Graphical Modeling", Michael I. Jordan, Zoubin Ghahramani, Tommi S. Jaakkola and Lawrence K. Saul, Machine Learning, Volume 37, Number 2 / November, 1999, 183-233 (I recommend through page 198), http://www.springerlink.com/index/N811M25287935571.pdf

2007-5-30

*Location: 1800 Club
*Topic: Graphical / Bayesian Models
*First Reading: "Introduction to Inference for Bayesian Networks", Robert Cowell, 1998
http://ccl.northwestern.edu/~wrand/nrg/intro_bayesian_nets.pdf

2007-5-16

*Location: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
*Topic: Information Theory
*First Reading: "Information and Entropy Econometrics--An Editor's View", Amos Golan, Journal of Econometris, 2002, Only read pages 1-16, v107, iss. 1-2, http://www.american.edu/academic.depts/cas/econ/faculty/golan/infoentropy.pdf
*Second Reading: "Induction of Decision Trees", J. R. Quinlan, Machine Learning, v1n1, March, 1986, p81-106, http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~roweis/csc2515/readings/quinlan.pdf

2007-5-2

*Location: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
*Topic: Some Optimization Techniques
*First Reading: "A Genetic Algorithm Tutorial", Darrell Whitley, http://samizdat.mines.edu/ga_tutorial/ga_tutorial.ps
*Second Reading: "Tabu Search: A Tutorial", Fred Glover, Interfaces; Jul/Aug90, Vol. 20 Issue 4, p74-94, http://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/glover/TS%20-%20Interfaces.pdf

2007-4-18

*Location: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
*Topic: Rugged Landscapes
*First Reading: Kirkpatrick, Gelatt, and Vecchi, Optimization by Simulated Annealing, Science 220, 671-680 (1983).
http://amaral.northwestern.edu/roger/SA.pdf
*Second Reading: Fleming and Sorenson, Technology as a complex adaptive system: evidence from patent data, Research Policy v30 (2001) p1019-1039 http://ccl.northwestern.edu/~wrand/nrg/fleming.pdf
*Third Reading: Kauffman and Levin, Towards a general theory of adaptive walks on rugged landscapes, J. Theor. Biol 128, 11-45 (1987)
http://amaral.northwestern.edu/roger/NK.pdf (first page slightly cut at the bottom)

2007-4-4

*Location: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
*Topic: Dynamical Systems
*First Reading: "Dynamic Pattern Formation: A Primer" J. A. Scott Kelso, Mingzhou Ding and Gregor Schoner (1993), p13-46 from "A Dynamic Systems Approach to Development" Edited by Linda B. Smith and Esther Thelen http://ccl.northwestern.edu/~wrand/nrg/kelso_etal_1993.pdf (p 13-27 our highly recommended)
*Second Reading: "Parsing in a Dynamical System: An Attractor-based Account of the Interaction of Lexical and Structural Constraints in Sentence Processing" Whitney Tabor, Cornell Juliano and Michael K. Tanenhaus (1997), p211-271, Language and Cognitive Processes, v12 (2/3) http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/content/lcrx490d5r5mek6x/fulltext.pdf

2007-3-21

*Location: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
*Topic: Self-Organization
*First Reading: "Quantifying Self-Organization with Optimal Predictors." Cosma Shalizi, Kristina Shalizi, and Robert Haslinger. Physical Review Letters, v93, 118701 (2004). http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.118701

• Cyclic CA model here: http://cs.northwestern.edu/~fjs750/models/cyclic-ca.html

2007-3-7

*Location: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
*Topic: Using statistical techniques in complex systems research
*Zeroth Reading: "The Future of Power-law Research", Michael Mitzenmacher, Internet Mathematics 2(4): 525-528 (only the first 4 pages), http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/postscripts/im2006a.pdf
*First Reading: "Superfamilies of designed and evolved networks", R Milo, S Itzkovitz, N Kashtan, R Levitt, S Shen-Orr, I Ayzenshtat, M Sheffer & U Alon. Science, 303:1538-42 (2004) http://www.weizmann.ac.il/mcb/UriAlon/Papers/Superfamilies_of_Evolved_and_Designed_Networks.pdf
*Second Reading: "Modularity from fluctuations in random graphs and complex networks" Guimera, Sales-Pardo, Amaral. Phys. Rev. E 70, art. no. 025101, 1-4 (2004) http://amaral.northwestern.edu/Publications/Papers/Guimera-2004-Phys.Rev.E-70-025101.pdf

2007-2-21

*Location: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
*Topic: Network Games
*First Reading: "A simple rule for the evolution of cooperation on graphs and social networks", Hisashi Ohtsuki, Christoph Hauert, Erez Lieberman, Martin A. Nowak, 2006 (3 pages), http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7092/abs/nature04605.html
*Second Reading: Network Games, Andrea Galeotti, Sanjeev, Goyal, Matthew O. Jackson, Fernando Vega-Redondo, Leeat Yariv, Under Revision, 2006, (45 pages total, but 1-18 covers the basics) http://www.stanford.edu/~jacksonm/networkgames.pdf

2007-2-7

*Location: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
*Topic: Game Theory
*First Reading (1 page): Nash, John (1950) "Equilibrium points in n-person games" Proceedings of the National Academy of the USA 36(1):48-49. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1063129
*Second Reading (8 pages): "An Introduction to Game Theory", p11-19, Martin J. Osborne, 2002, http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~osborne/igt/nash.pdf (this section is much longer but pages 11-19 cover most of the material we want to discuss)
*Third Reading (3 pages): Evolutionary game theory. Current Biology, 1999. Karl Sigmund and Michael Nowak
http://www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/publications_nowak/CurBio99a.pdf

2007-1-24

*Location: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
*Topic: Diffusion of Innovation on Networks
*First Reading: "A simple model of global cascades on random networks", Duncan J. Watts, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 30, 2002, vol. 99, no. 9, p. 5766-5771 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/9/5766
*Second Reading: "Technology as a complex adaptive system: evidence from patent data", Lee Fleming and Olav Sorenson, Research Policy, v30, 2001, 1019-1039, http://www.people.hbs.edu/lfleming/RP2001.pdf

2007-1-10

*Location: Chambers Hall, Ground Floor
*Topic Exploration and Exploitation
*First Reading: "Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning", James G. March, Organization Science, Vol. 2, No. 1, Special Issue: Organizational Learning: Papers in Honor of (and by) James G. March. (1991), pp. 71-87., http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1047-7039%281991%292%3A1%3C71%3AEAEIOL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N
*Second Reading: "Inspiration for optimization from social insect behaviour", E. Bonabeau1, M. Dorigo and G. Theraulaz, Nature 406, 39-42(6 July 2000)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6791/abs/406039a0.html

2006-12-13

*Location: Chambers Hall, Downstairs
*Topic: Evolution of Cooperation
*First reading: "The Further Evolution of Cooperation", Robert Axelrod and Douglas Dion, Science, New Series, Vol. 242, No. 4884. (Dec. 9, 1988), pp. 1385-1390. http://www.jstor.org/view/00368075/ap003615/00a00240/0
*Second reading: "Emergence of human cooperation and altruism by evolutionary feedback selection", D. Darcet, D. Sornette, http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0610225

[For further readings, it turns out Science had quite a few articles this week:
Science, Volume 314, Issue 5805, dated December 8 2006, is now available at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol314/issue5805/index.dtl?etoc

]

2006-11-29

*Location: Chambers Hall, Downstairs
*Topic: Local inhibition and long-rate activation create spatial patterns
*First reading: Andersson, C., K. Lindgren, S. Rasmussen, and R. White, 2002. Urban growth simulation from ”first principles”. Physical Review E, 66(026204).
http://ees.lanl.gov/staff/steen/papers/prepaper08061.pdf

This paper has a lot of math at the beginning but pretty pictures follow. For an agent-based approach to the same problem, modesty forbids me to recommend, but you may want to look at:
Rand, William, Brown, Daniel G., Page, Scott E., Riolo, Rick, Fernandez, Luis E., and Moira Zellner, Agent-Based Simulation 4 2003, April 28-20, Montpellier, France. "Statistical Validation of Spatial Patterns in Agent-Based Models"
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/sluce/publications/sluce-abs.pdf

*Second reading: W. Hordijk, J. P. Crutcheld, and M. Mitchell. Embedded-particle computation in evolved cellular automata.
In T. Toffoli, M. Biafore, and J. Leao, editors, PhysComp96, pages 153-8. New England Systems Institute, 1996.
link: http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~mm/physcomp96.pdf

Note: For those unfamiliar with cellular automata, the most famous example is the so-called "Game of Life". Here's an applet version of a NetLogo model of the Game of Life, http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/LifeTurtle-Based . (Read the instructions on that page, then click the "Run Life Turtle-Based in your browser" link at the top.) The Game of Life is an example of two dimensional cellular automata. For an example of the workings of one dimensional cellular automata (discussed in the Hordijk paper), see http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/CA1DRule90 .

2006-11-15

*Location: Basement of Chambers Hall
*Topic: Positive Feedbacks and Path Dependent Processes
*First reading: W. Brian Arthur, "Positive Feedbacks in the Economy", Scientific American, Feb. 1990 http://www.santafe.edu/arthur/Papers/Pdf_files/SciAm_Article.pdf
*Second reading: Sanjay Jain and Sandeep Krishna, A model for the emergence of cooperation, interdependence, and structure in evolving networks, PNAS 98, 543-547, 2001
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/98/2/543.pdf
*Third reading: FitzHugh-Nagumo Model http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/FitzHugh-Nagumo_Model
This is a classic model that shows how neural excitability can be understood in terms of positive and negative feedback.
[For a broader perspective on single-neuron modeling, I recommend this review published last month in Science: Modeling single-neuron dynamics and computations: A balance of detail and abstraction http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;314/5796/80
For a more detailed mathematical treatment, I recommend this book chapter: Understanding neuronal dynamics by geometrical dissection of minimal models by A. Borisyuk and J. Rinzel http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~rinzel/compNeuro05/NeuroDynamics_AB_JR_Chapt.pdf ]

2006-11-2

*Location: Basement of Chambers Hall
*4 PM - 5 PM Methods and Techniques of Complex Systems Science: An Overview, Cosma R. Shalizi
http://arxiv.org/abs/nlin.AO/0307015
This is a long paper (actually a book chapter) and so it is not expected that everyone will have read the whole thing. However, reading the first five pages as an overview is recommended, after that pick and choose sections of the chapter that appeal to you. The breakdown of the chapter is described on page 4. The meat of the chapter goes through page 67, after that it is pointers to additional readings, and references.

*5 PM - 6 PM Discussion of Papers to Read in upcoming meetings
Bring a paper that you think is a good introduction to a complex systems technique, or one that describes the relationship between complex systems and your field and we will put together an agenda for the upcoming meetings

2006-10-18

*Location: Basement of Chambers Hall
*Administrative Meeting

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