Santa Fe Institute Events Wiki - User contributions [en]

Talk page for the Complexity Project

2011-06-29T17:53:48Z

Rgbaird:

{{Complex Systems Summer School 2011}}

This is the page for formulating an answer to the Challenge Question on Complexity.

==Refining the question: what are we trying to answer? Time based? Scale? Dynamics?==
==Conceptualization: what are the concepts to lock in for testing?==
==Models available for modification:==
<ul>
<li>NetLogo diffusion models
<li>Netlogo network models
<li>Bhavnani Findley Kuklinski (rumors on ethnic conflict)
</ul>
==Assembly of annotated bibliography for data/parameter mining==

Crutchfield, Jim (2009). "The Hidden Fragility of Complex Systems: Consequences of Change, Changes of Consequences". http://www.santafe.edu/media/workingpapers/09-12-045.pdf
-This paper is Jim's rough answer to his own question; we should consider it our ur-text for this project. It is non-technical reading (something like a long op-ed) but sketches out basic definitions of fragility, complexity, and the sorts of problems he sees as needing answers. It also has some references we may want to explore further. MDT

Johnson, Simon. "13 Bankers and the Next Financial Meltdown" (.pdf). http://ineteconomics.org/sites/inet.civicactions.net/files/INETSession8-SimonJohnson_0.pdf - Jim's paper points to the economy as 'complex', and argues this complexity created fragility that led to the recent crisis. Johnson's argument is a bit different: increasing concentration of wealth among a few key financial firms led to regulatory capture and strong homogeneity in that sector. From our perspective, this process ''reduced'' the complexity of the financial-political system, and made it prone to failure. MDT

Jason mentioned this paper - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1864633 - to me last week, and I think it deals with directly to some of the stuff we've discussed. It is by Nassim Taleb, the gentlemen who wrote "Black Swan." It is a heuristic for detecting fragility or non-fragility of a system. ~Ryan B.

==Data Sets Available==

I was looking around tonight and found out the FAO has a detailed trade matrix on food commodity flows from 1986-2008. Its a pain to deal with and might take a lot of work to get it in a useable form, but we could definitely use it for a weighted network of the most important grain importers / exporters.

FAO also has a really neat set of monthly retail and export price data from around the world available here: http://www.fao.org/giews/pricetool2/. This would be another way of looking at coupling between geographically seperated regions. Most data sets only go back to about 2002-ish, so we can't look at how it changes over time, but can still look at coupling today.

Finally, the USDA has annual grain stock data by year for 1960-2011 that could be used for a 'robustness' measure of different nodes in the network. -- Fran

(PS - here is a link to a moderately interesting IFPRI article that looks at the effects of stocks and particularly export bans / panic buying in propagating the 2007-2008 food price shock:http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp00958.pdf
They have a formula relating the impact of sudden demand / supply changes on short-run global prices that might be relevant)

This site has a whole bunch of datasets on food production, consumption, etc, as well as biofuels data: http://www.earth-policy.org/books/wote/wote_data#5

Unfortunately, datasets on biofuels trade (more specific that production and consumption) are hard to come by without an expensive subscription to FO Licht's report. If we want to include changes in biofuel production/trade and impacts on food production/trade, we could maybe just calculate that from the production/consumption stats without more specific known flows. -Lydia

Here's the mother lode of data on rice. http://beta.irri.org/solutions/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=250 -Jason

==Talking about Food==
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/science/earth/07cassava.html Cassava prices in Thailand]

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.html Quinoa prices and food consumption habits in Bolivia]

[http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/268756/market_famines.html IMF + EU + WB pressures on food storage rates]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_world_food_price_crisis crop failure + increasing oil prices = food prices go up]

Interesting op-ed on whether or not food prices can be stabilized and how they might or might not be. The author is Jeff Frankel from Harvard. Describes the problems as he sees them and then argues France is wrong to target speculators, as they probably are not destabilizing, its government intervention (both exporter and importer), that is likely the problem. And that speculators actually probably identify when the price system is most fragile. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/frankel5/English ~ Ryan B.

==Publications on Global Trade Modeling==

1. This is a book that is very good about walking you through trade modeling: http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/pv08.pdf

2. This is a WTO working paper which "demystify's global trade modeling": http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/pv08.pdf

3. This is an interesting working paper that covers the intellectual history of "computable generalizable equilibrium" models, and discusses a sort of collusion/conspiracy about how they became the go to model in the policy world and that they really have no micro-economic foundations.
http://www.newschool.edu/scepa/publications/workingpapers/SCEPA%20Working%20Paper%202008-1%20Kahn.pdf
~Ryan B.

Talk page for the Complexity Project

2011-06-29T17:52:59Z

Rgbaird:

{{Complex Systems Summer School 2011}}

This is the page for formulating an answer to the Challenge Question on Complexity.

==Refining the question: what are we trying to answer? Time based? Scale? Dynamics?==
==Conceptualization: what are the concepts to lock in for testing?==
==Models available for modification:==
<ul>
<li>NetLogo diffusion models
<li>Netlogo network models
<li>Bhavnani Findley Kuklinski (rumors on ethnic conflict)
</ul>
==Assembly of annotated bibliography for data/parameter mining==

Crutchfield, Jim (2009). "The Hidden Fragility of Complex Systems: Consequences of Change, Changes of Consequences". http://www.santafe.edu/media/workingpapers/09-12-045.pdf
-This paper is Jim's rough answer to his own question; we should consider it our ur-text for this project. It is non-technical reading (something like a long op-ed) but sketches out basic definitions of fragility, complexity, and the sorts of problems he sees as needing answers. It also has some references we may want to explore further. MDT

Johnson, Simon. "13 Bankers and the Next Financial Meltdown" (.pdf). http://ineteconomics.org/sites/inet.civicactions.net/files/INETSession8-SimonJohnson_0.pdf - Jim's paper points to the economy as 'complex', and argues this complexity created fragility that led to the recent crisis. Johnson's argument is a bit different: increasing concentration of wealth among a few key financial firms led to regulatory capture and strong homogeneity in that sector. From our perspective, this process ''reduced'' the complexity of the financial-political system, and made it prone to failure. MDT

Jason mentioned this paper - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1864633 - to me last week, and I think it deals with directly to some of the stuff we've discussed. It is by Nassim Taleb, the gentlemen who wrote "Black Swan." It is a heuristic for detecting fragility or non-fragility of a system. ~Ryan B.

Interesting op-ed on whether or not food prices can be stabilized and how they might or might not be. The author is Jeff Frankel from Harvard. Describes the problems as he sees them and then argues France is wrong to target speculators, as they probably are not destabilizing, its government intervention (both exporter and importer), that is likely the problem. And that speculators actually probably identify when the price system is most fragile. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/frankel5/English ~ Ryan B.

==Data Sets Available==

I was looking around tonight and found out the FAO has a detailed trade matrix on food commodity flows from 1986-2008. Its a pain to deal with and might take a lot of work to get it in a useable form, but we could definitely use it for a weighted network of the most important grain importers / exporters.

FAO also has a really neat set of monthly retail and export price data from around the world available here: http://www.fao.org/giews/pricetool2/. This would be another way of looking at coupling between geographically seperated regions. Most data sets only go back to about 2002-ish, so we can't look at how it changes over time, but can still look at coupling today.

Finally, the USDA has annual grain stock data by year for 1960-2011 that could be used for a 'robustness' measure of different nodes in the network. -- Fran

(PS - here is a link to a moderately interesting IFPRI article that looks at the effects of stocks and particularly export bans / panic buying in propagating the 2007-2008 food price shock:http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp00958.pdf
They have a formula relating the impact of sudden demand / supply changes on short-run global prices that might be relevant)

This site has a whole bunch of datasets on food production, consumption, etc, as well as biofuels data: http://www.earth-policy.org/books/wote/wote_data#5

Unfortunately, datasets on biofuels trade (more specific that production and consumption) are hard to come by without an expensive subscription to FO Licht's report. If we want to include changes in biofuel production/trade and impacts on food production/trade, we could maybe just calculate that from the production/consumption stats without more specific known flows. -Lydia

Here's the mother lode of data on rice. http://beta.irri.org/solutions/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=250 -Jason

==Talking about Food==
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/science/earth/07cassava.html Cassava prices in Thailand]

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.html Quinoa prices and food consumption habits in Bolivia]

[http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/268756/market_famines.html IMF + EU + WB pressures on food storage rates]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_world_food_price_crisis crop failure + increasing oil prices = food prices go up]

==Publications on Global Trade Modeling==

1. This is a book that is very good about walking you through trade modeling: http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/pv08.pdf

2. This is a WTO working paper which "demystify's global trade modeling": http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/pv08.pdf

3. This is an interesting working paper that covers the intellectual history of "computable generalizable equilibrium" models, and discusses a sort of collusion/conspiracy about how they became the go to model in the policy world and that they really have no micro-economic foundations.
http://www.newschool.edu/scepa/publications/workingpapers/SCEPA%20Working%20Paper%202008-1%20Kahn.pdf
~Ryan B.

Talk page for the Complexity Project

2011-06-29T15:18:23Z

Rgbaird:

{{Complex Systems Summer School 2011}}

This is the page for formulating an answer to the Challenge Question on Complexity.

==Refining the question: what are we trying to answer? Time based? Scale? Dynamics?==
==Conceptualization: what are the concepts to lock in for testing?==
==Models available for modification:==
<ul>
<li>NetLogo diffusion models
<li>Netlogo network models
<li>Bhavnani Findley Kuklinski (rumors on ethnic conflict)
</ul>
==Assembly of annotated bibliography for data/parameter mining==

Crutchfield, Jim (2009). "The Hidden Fragility of Complex Systems: Consequences of Change, Changes of Consequences". http://www.santafe.edu/media/workingpapers/09-12-045.pdf
-This paper is Jim's rough answer to his own question; we should consider it our ur-text for this project. It is non-technical reading (something like a long op-ed) but sketches out basic definitions of fragility, complexity, and the sorts of problems he sees as needing answers. It also has some references we may want to explore further. MDT

Johnson, Simon. "13 Bankers and the Next Financial Meltdown" (.pdf). http://ineteconomics.org/sites/inet.civicactions.net/files/INETSession8-SimonJohnson_0.pdf - Jim's paper points to the economy as 'complex', and argues this complexity created fragility that led to the recent crisis. Johnson's argument is a bit different: increasing concentration of wealth among a few key financial firms led to regulatory capture and strong homogeneity in that sector. From our perspective, this process ''reduced'' the complexity of the financial-political system, and made it prone to failure. MDT

Jason mentioned this paper - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1864633 - to me last week, and I think it deals with directly to some of the stuff we've discussed. It is by Nassim Taleb, the gentlemen who wrote "Black Swan." It is a heuristic for detecting fragility or non-fragility of a system. ~Ryan B.

==Data Sets Available==

I was looking around tonight and found out the FAO has a detailed trade matrix on food commodity flows from 1986-2008. Its a pain to deal with and might take a lot of work to get it in a useable form, but we could definitely use it for a weighted network of the most important grain importers / exporters.

FAO also has a really neat set of monthly retail and export price data from around the world available here: http://www.fao.org/giews/pricetool2/. This would be another way of looking at coupling between geographically seperated regions. Most data sets only go back to about 2002-ish, so we can't look at how it changes over time, but can still look at coupling today.

Finally, the USDA has annual grain stock data by year for 1960-2011 that could be used for a 'robustness' measure of different nodes in the network. -- Fran

(PS - here is a link to a moderately interesting IFPRI article that looks at the effects of stocks and particularly export bans / panic buying in propagating the 2007-2008 food price shock:http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp00958.pdf
They have a formula relating the impact of sudden demand / supply changes on short-run global prices that might be relevant)

This site has a whole bunch of datasets on food production, consumption, etc, as well as biofuels data: http://www.earth-policy.org/books/wote/wote_data#5

Unfortunately, datasets on biofuels trade (more specific that production and consumption) are hard to come by without an expensive subscription to FO Licht's report. If we want to include changes in biofuel production/trade and impacts on food production/trade, we could maybe just calculate that from the production/consumption stats without more specific known flows. -Lydia

Here's the mother lode of data on rice. http://beta.irri.org/solutions/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=250 -Jason

==Talking about Food==
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/science/earth/07cassava.html Cassava prices in Thailand]

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.html Quinoa prices and food consumption habits in Bolivia]

[http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/268756/market_famines.html IMF + EU + WB pressures on food storage rates]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_world_food_price_crisis crop failure + increasing oil prices = food prices go up]

==Publications on Global Trade Modeling==

1. This is a book that is very good about walking you through trade modeling: http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/pv08.pdf

2. This is a WTO working paper which "demystify's global trade modeling": http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/pv08.pdf

3. This is an interesting working paper that covers the intellectual history of "computable generalizable equilibrium" models, and discusses a sort of collusion/conspiracy about how they became the go to model in the policy world and that they really have no micro-economic foundations.
http://www.newschool.edu/scepa/publications/workingpapers/SCEPA%20Working%20Paper%202008-1%20Kahn.pdf
~Ryan B.

Talk page for the Complexity Project

2011-06-27T16:26:50Z

Rgbaird:

Alfred Hubler's Nonlinear Dynamics Lab 2011

2011-06-20T20:07:22Z

Rgbaird: /* Tuesday, June 21, 6:00pm */

{{Complex Systems Summer School 2011}}

==Thursday, June 16, 6:00pm==

1. Ronnie Garduño 
2. Martin Gould 
3.Chris Glazner 
4. Anna Deluca 
5. Ryan James 
6. Nora Connor 
7. Taka Sasaki 
8. Guido Montufar 
9. Michael Johansson 
10.Randy Casstevens 
11.Nathan Wang 
12. Josh Auerbach 
13. Cali Mortenson Ellis 
14. Kevin Carlson 
15. Sean Roberts 

==Friday, June 17 7:00am==
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS AN EARLY MORNING CLASS! 
1. Aaron Brooks 
2. Miles Townes 
3. NIcolas Paez 
4. Cristina Metgher 
5. Kameron Harris 
6. 
7. 
8. 
9. 
10. 
11. 
12. 
13. 
14. 
15. 

==Monday, June 20, 6:00pm==
1. Shweta Singh 
2. Zoe Hamstead 
3. Michael Sachs 
4. Evelien van der Hurk 
5. Nadja Kunz 
6. Fran Moore 
7. Lydia Smith 
8. Jason Veneman 
9. Leonida Gheorghiade 
10.Yangjing Long 
11. Raghav Chawla 
12.Joshua Garland 
13.Anand 
14.Antoine 
15.Stefani Crabtree 

==Tuesday, June 21, 6:00pm==
1. Nini Zhang 
2. Aaron Brooks 
3. Tom Weinreich 
4. Jacob Jensen 
5. Ryan Baird 
6. 
7. 
8. 
9. 
10. 
11. 
12. 
13. 
14. 
15.

Complex Systems Summer School 2011-Projects & Working Groups

2011-06-17T16:24:19Z

Rgbaird: /* Econophysics/Economics Working Group */

{{Complex Systems Summer School 2011}}

If you'd like to work on a project with other members of the group, please use this page to organize your thoughts and efforts. We'll schedule a time when we can show off your work towards the end of the program.

==Keywords==

Hey Guys! Some of your research interests have been entered. Hopefully this can give us a better idea of what we are studying, and how we can collaborate for the final challenge. They are organized in a [https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ak7533_HL5TadHdhRUFyWGVLRHlmN2liSEVtR2FDUEE&hl=en_US google doc].

Hey Again! Here are two versions of the GML. The first is non-editable, it works. The second can be messed around with like a normal sharable google doc. Please remember to cut and paste ALL of the text (No bracket left behind!) into a text editor of your choice (like notepad) and save it as a .gml. There is a code called "value", this is so you can manipulate the PeopleNodes and the SubjectNodes as separate variables. If you have trouble, let me know. Again, apologies for misspellings and mis-placing-you-in-the-mega-universe-of-stuff-to-study.

ALPHA:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/15eViqP9BDEsDRqw1Z-R3LnOB04AN57o631YeCxTQQsk/edit?hl=en_US ALPHA GML KEYWORD NETWORK!]

BETA:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PHDX8LJg-llngEe7tDuQrJTdi6i8q8xwsM7l6dB5oCE/edit?hl=en_US BETA GML KEYWORD NETWORK!]

-Clio

==Meeting with Geoffrey West==

A group of us were interested to continue a discussion with Geoffrey West following his lecture this evening. We will be meeting over lunch next Wednesday 15th June at SFI in the medium conference room. Please add your name to the below list if you would like to attend. 
Nadja Kunz 
Martin Hilbert 
Shweta Singh 
Fran Moore 
Matteo Gagliolo 
Kevin Carlson 
Raghad Chawla 
Jacob Jensen 
Cristina Metgher 
Alejandro Fajardo 
Lydia Smith 
Antoine Allard 
Michael Sachs 
Nicolas Paez 
Christian Gunning 
Nathan Wang 

==Chaotic DJs==

I'd like to play around with the idea of using chaotic attractors to create music, as introduced by Liz Bradley. If anyone else is interested, please say so below! Ideally, I'd love to create a new piece of music (perhaps even recording a few of the budding musicians at the summer school if possible!), pull the individual parts of the composition apart and then use chaotic attractors to put them back together in new (and constantly evolving) ways. I have music production software on my laptop that we can use as a backbone, but we'd need to work out how to program something so that the differential equations controlled it (or otherwise figure out how to use the DEs to make a composition that we then record within the software - perhaps an easier option!) I'd like to hear other people's ideas about what elements of the piece the chaotic attractors could be used to manipulate - Liz's example only used them to re-order pitch, but I'm sure there are other things that we could do too. Hopefully this could be a project that we could play with in our spare time - I'm also looking to join in with a more academic project too, but I think this could potentially be a very enjoyable side-project. -Martin Gould

Interested: 
Anna Deluca 
Nini Zhang (I'm particularly interested variations as defined computationally v musically) 
Stefani Crabtree (What a great idea! I'm a musician: www.stefanicrabtree.com) 
Lydia Smith (I hope it's not too late to jump on board!) 
Sean Roberts

How about having a quick meeting to discuss ideas on Thursday lunch time? Dining hall at noon? The original paper that Liz talked about is here: [http://www.aip.org/journals/chaos/95_1.pdf] perhaps we could discuss which of the original ideas we'd like to use and also brainstorm some new ones that we'd like to try out. -Martin

[[A Page for Mysterious Things]] 
In other words, it's the talk page for members of this group. It's not exciting, don't look at it.

==The CSSS11-network challenge==

'''MEETING TUESDAY 21 AFTER LECTURES''' 
Coming Tuesday, 20 minutes after the lectures end*, I will organize a get together on this project. Everyone interested, please feel welcome. I will announce the location later, here. 
Please, do the following three things: 

1) If you are interested in the analysis, if you have not yet done so, please feel in the survey (we need data!) 
2) Think about what kind of thing you want to bring to this group: passive discussion/knowledge, or active ideas, hands on data analysis, and such 
3) In the latter case of active participation, formulate your ideas in a less-than-5-minute (without slides) old fashioned talk/reasoning 

We will have approx. 5 min idea-statements followed by approx. 5 minute positive, constructive discussion (this will be like a brainstorm session, so all ideas are welcome). 
After we have heard all ideas, the people who want to actively participate will be strongly involved in making a practical schedule.
I plan to have a first (anonymous) data-set available on Tuesday, if I’m lucky, before that. 

*I know that this will coincide with the individual talks of us, which are really interesting, too. The schedule with the labs, evening lectures, and so on, is just too full to do anything else. If you now have a double appointment, one solution is always to (convince your favorite speaker) to present in the last week. 

Thank you for all your help and looking forward to Tuesday! 

Evelien 

PS 
We might need some help with getting the data into a nice structure and such. If converting excel files to graphs is something you like to do, please drop me an email.

'''About the project''' 
Today the Networks Module has started. One of the well-known examples of a network, is a social network.
Did you realize you have been working hard on an (almost) completely new social network in the past few days?

How do these networks come in to place? How do we make friends? Will we be a fully connected network? How many hubs do we have - and can we explain how these hubs come in to place?

This is an excellent opportunity to find some answers to these questions!

The idea is to base the results on the contacts people make. Simply put: who did you have a conversation with? By noting this regularly, we can see the connectedness and sorts of the network evolve over time.

The plan is to collect data on 
1) The evolvement of the network over time, in terms of nr of contacts (conversations lasting over 10 minutes) per approx. 2 days 
2) The 'final' network, as in the people you feel connected to (would like to contact for science or social activities) 

All results will be processed anonymously and will appear (at the end of the summerschool) on the wiki.

We need your help off course, to answer these questions. 
The first survey can be found at: www.thesistools.com/web/?id=20584 

If you are interested in this project, I will organize some discussion meeting (probably in the next week). For now: add your name to the list below, and send in the survey! (while encouraging as much of your connections as you can to do so, too ;) )

If you have any questions, send a message to ehuk at rsm dot nl.

Thank you so much for your help!

The CSSS11-network challenge team 
- Evelien 
- Tomas 
- Clio 
- Randy 
- Antoine 
- JP 
- Cristina M. 
- ....(put your name here if you are in any way interested) 

Hey Guys! Some of your research interests have been entered. Hopefully this can give us a better idea of what we are studying, and how we can collaborate for the final challenge. They are organized in a google doc for sorting, searching etc, and all should have editing privileges. Sorry for typos!

[https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ak7533_HL5TadHdhRUFyWGVLRHlmN2liSEVtR2FDUEE&hl=en_US LINK TO GOOGLE DOC SPREADSHEET]

CHECK BACK FOR A NETWORK OF OUR INTERESTS!!!!!!

-Clio

==Econophysics/Economics Working Group==

Akira, Veronica and I have been discussing some econophysics-type problems recently, and we are going to set up a small working group to meet and discuss our work and problems that we've been thinking about. We will be talking about using ideas from complex systems (such as agent-based modelling, statistical mechanics, etc.) to re-visit traditional problems from economics. We haven't set a date for our first meeting yet, but it's likely to be early next week. Please add your name to the list below if you'd like to come along, either to talk or just to listen! 
Martin Gould 
Akira Toda 
Veronica Gheorghiade 
Shweta Singh 
Matteo Gagliolo 
Fran Moore 
Ryan j 
Alejandro Fajardo (quietly attending) 
Ryan Baird

Complex Systems Summer School 2011-Projects & Working Groups

2011-06-17T16:23:58Z

Rgbaird:

Ryan Baird

2011-06-07T23:51:19Z

Rgbaird:

I have a Ph.D. in Political Science with a focus in International Relations and International Political Economy from the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona.

Ryan Baird

2011-06-07T23:50:56Z

Rgbaird: Created page with 'I have a Ph.D. in Political Science with a focus in International Relations and International Political Economy.'

I have a Ph.D. in Political Science with a focus in International Relations and International Political Economy.