Slides from Lectures:
Please see the most recent version of this course for evolved lecture notes.Summary of areas covered: (1) A broad overview of complex systems.
(2) A brief overview of complex networks.
(3) Initial lectures on scaling (power law relationships, allometry, size distributions, scaling in biology, scaling in geometry, critical phenomena of statistical mechanics, and more).
(4) A more detailed look at some key mechanisms that give rise to power-law size distributions.
(5) More guff on power-law mechanisms, focusing on optimality theories; also involved: robustness, lognormals, and Benford's law.
And a random video regarding the excellent lying lyrebird.
(6) Lectures on the spreading of many things, especially biological and social contagion.
Short videos regarding contagion:
(a) The spreading of certain buildings across the United States.
(b) The spreading of spreading. (The main article is here.)
(7) A short overview of voting. Contents: when collective estimation works, when it goes bad, pistachios, and an online experiment exploring the imitation of cultural tastes.
Have some fun with Netlogo.
(Note: Part way through the semester, I switched to using beamer to improve these slides. In the end, I made lecture sets (1), (4), (5), (6), and (7) with beamer; the other two sets remain in their unrefined state. Amongst many benefits, these slides are clickable (making nagivation enjoyable), they are easily themed, and an article format can be generated. Next time round, hopefully, I'll make the underlying latex, slides, and the handout form all available.)
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