Lecture 01

August 30, 2019

For today

• 1. Prepare for the workshop following these instructions

Today

• 1. Complexity workshop part 1

  2. Course overview

For next time

• 1. Accept my invitation to the Canvas page and check your profile (name, email)

  2. Read Think Complexity 2e Chapter 1 and do the reading quiz (see below)

  3. Subscribe to the Complexity Digest (new link now working)

  4. Do the "Big Sort" exercise is the 01_workshop.ipynb notebook. No turn in required.

Complexity Science Workshop

Link to slides

Course Overview

See the home page for learning goals.

Here are the activities and products:

Reading: Think Complexity plus original articles and your literature search. Reading quizzes on Canvas.

My textbook manifesto: Students should read and understand textbooks.

I have done my best to make the book readable. Chapters are ~15 pages.

You will learn more if you read them.

• 1. Best: Read the chapter, then go back and do the quiz. Multiple passes is really good for learning.

  2. Also good: Read the questions, then the chapter, then do the quiz. Targeted reading can be effective.

  3. Not as good: Read the questions and skim the chapter for answers. Better than nothing.

  4. Not better than nothing: Nothing.

  5. Worse than nothing: Get answers from a friend.

Homeworks: Jupyter notebooks from Think Complexity with exercises.

Use homeworks to help you learn. If it helps to work with other people or look at our solutions, that is not forbidden, HOWEVER:

1) Don't deprive yourself of the opportunity to develop skills, especially programming and debugging.

2) Don't kid yourself! It's easy to convince yourself that you are learning, only to be rudely contradicted by the quizzes and project.

3) Don't misrepresent your work. As long as you acknowledge sources, you are not doing anything dishonest.

Homeworks are mostly developmental; they don't carry a lot of weight for evaluation. But they are a good way to learn, so take them seriously.

To help you avoid the late homework spiral of doom, I will be strict about deadlines. Late homeworks can get half credit at most. However, late is still better than never.

Homeworks are due at 10pm to remind you: Eat well, sleep well, and get some exercise. Take care of your brain; you might need it some day.

Quizzes:

We'll have about 7 of them, at the beginning of class, for about 30 minutes, mostly about the reading and exercises.

We'll go over solutions together. You might grade your own or each others'.

Quizzes are intended to help you and me assess your progress. They also help me assess and improve the course materials.

Projects:

Two cycles, each based on replicating and extending prior work.

• • Project 1: Graphs and networks.

  • Project 2: Agent-based models.

Smallish teams: 2-3 people, with 1 and 4 being negotiable.

We'll have time and a process for idea generation and team formation. But it's never too early!