Education
Course Offerings - CSCS (Division 348) 501
CSCS 501: An Introduction to Complex Systems -- Fall 2002
Mon, Wed 4:00 - 5:30 pm
CSCS Commons -- 4481 Randall Lab Bldg
Credits: 3
Rick Riolo
rlriolo@umich.edu
Goals of CSCS 501
This course covers a broad range of fundamental topics relevant to the
study of complex systems. The course work involves weekly readings
and discussion of papers and selections from books. The readings
focus on "classics" in the complex systems literature, in order to
give students a broad, general understanding for the variety of work
that falls under the rubric of complex systems. Topics to be covered
will include evolutionary systems, self-organized criticality,
measures of complexity, approaches to modeling complex adaptive
systems, and emergence. Authors to be covered include Holland,
Axelrod, Kauffman, Bak, and Gell-Mann, Wolfram, Simon and many others.
More details about the class are included in a
handout passed out at the first class.
More details on the syllabus of readings will be announced later;
some readings will only be determined after the class begins,
based on the expressed interests of the participants.
The actual readings for Fall 2002 will be placed
here
when they are known.
Some of those readings are from books we will buy.
Others will be in course packs.
To get an idea of what kinds of readings are appropriate,
the actual reading assignments for the Fall 2001 term
were these,
and for the Fall 2000 term, they were
these,
The actual reading assignments for the Fall 1999 term were
these.
Candidate topics and readings are
here.
A few additional general CAS readings can be found
here.
Some historical notes about the origins of this course,
as well as more details on the format of the course, are
here.
Egroup for this course.
Participants this term.
Syllabus for this term,
including discussion leader assignments.
Classwork and grades:
Grading will be based on participation in the discussions and on two papers:
1. Class discussion 33%
(An incentive to read and discuss!)
2. Short paper I 33%
Due: Monday 28 Oct
3. Short paper II 33%
Due: Tues 17 December
Press
here for a description of
the paper requirements.
Here are copies of student papers
for the first assignment.
Last Changed: 28 October 2002.
