Education
Course Offerings - CSCS (Division 348) 530
CSCS 530: Computer Modeling of Complex Systems -- Winter 2002
Wed, Fri 1:00 - 2:30 pm
Room 213 Dennison
(maybe sometimes in CSCS Commons, 4487 Randall)
Rick Riolo
rlriolo@umich.edu
Under construction for Winter 2002
Important note regarding registration:
The course is currently listed with a cap of 10 students
(and is full).
The final course size will be in the 15-20 range.
If you are interested in registering, please just get
on the waitlist.
We will be give priority in this order:
CSCS students
other graduate students
undergraduates
with first-come-first serve within each category.
In past years, everyone who has wanted to stay in the course
has been able to, even when the waiting list starts out fairly large,
as people sign up now but drop before the term starts, or drop after
they find out how hard the course is going to be (! ;-)), etc.
So if you are interested, I recommend you get on the waitlist,
come to the first class or two, and then we can see what
shakes out.
If you have questions, feel free to contact me.
Goals of CSCS 530
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the basic
concepts, tools and issues which arise when using computers to model
complex (adaptive) systems (CAS). The emphasis will be on agent-based,
bottom-up computer models. (We will only briefly look at other approaches.)
The bulk of the course will involve "learning by example", i.e., students will:
- read, discuss, evaluate a number of models
from a variety of disciplines.
- Modify and run experiments with exisiting models.
- Design, implement, run, write-up results from their own models.
The course will cover all aspects of the modeling process itself, from model
design through implementation to analyzing, documenting and communicating results.
This course is:
- Not IOE 474: That course (offered this term?) focuses
on DES models for "Operations Research (OR)" type questions
(queuing, stocks and flows, etc).
- Not IOE 640: That course (offered this term?): contack S.Pollock)
focuses on mathematical models (of OR type problems, I think).
The emphasis in CSCS 530 is on "Exploratory Models" of more
generic complex (adaptive) systems and/or phenomena
(vs. "predictive" models for specific situations).
If you need an introduction to programming in general, to working in
the linux/unix enviroment, to programming in the C language,
please consider this short (1 credit) course:
CSCS Short Workshop Series:
Basic Computing Skills for Programming Agent Based Models,
which is being offered Tuesdays 3:30-5pm starting 23 October.
Classwork and grades:
Projects and their influence on a course-grade are as follows:
1. Class discussion 20%
(An incentive to read and discuss!)
2. Short paper 20%
3. Small computer modeling project(s) 20%
4. Term project 40%
a. Proposal (5%)
b. Class Presentation (5%)
c. Paper (30%)
Important Links:
Course Outline: topics, readings, exercises, handouts.
egroup for the course
Project 1 Description.
Short paper Description.
Project 2 Description.
CSCS Computer Lab online documents.
CSCS 530 Outline for Winter 2001, which has a few different
readings from this year.
Last Changed: 6 Jan 2002.
