Topics to be covered, more or less.

  • Definitions and background
    • Complexity and Complex Systems
    • A Manifesto for Studying Complex Systems
    • Data
    • Emergence
    • Statistical Mechanics
  • Scaling phenomena
    • Dimensional Analysis
    • Allometry
    • Scaling in physical systems
    • Scaling in biological and ecological systems
    • Scaling in technological systems
    • Scaling of social phenomena: crime, creativity, and consumption
    • Power-law size distributions
    • Zipf's law
    • Non-Gaussian statistics and power-law size distributions
    • Fundamental mechanisms leading to power-law size distributions
  • Integrity of complex systems
    • Generic failure mechanisms
    • Network robustness
    • Highly optimized tolerance: Robustness and fragility
    • Normal accidents and high reliability theory
  • Complex networks
    • Random networks
    • Small-world networks
    • The Six Degrees of Separation thing
    • Scale-free networks
    • Search in networked systems (e.g., the web, social systems)
    • Search on scale-free networks
    • Knowledge trees, metadata and tagging
  • Multiscale complex systems
    • Hierarchies and scaling
    • Modularity
    • Form and context in design
  • Collective behavior and contagion in social systems
    • Percolation and phase transitions
    • Disease spreading models
    • Schelling's model of segregation
    • Granovetter's model of imitation
    • Contagion on networks
    • Herding phenomena
    • Cooperation
    • Success inequality: Superstardom and Fame
  • Collective decision making
    • Theories of social choice
    • The role of randomness and chance
    • Systems of voting
    • Juries
  • If time: Happiness
  • A theory of anything: Why Complexify?