CSSS 2006 Beijing-Readings

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Below are some readings that can provide some background for some of the lectures and/or that you can read after the lecturers to pursue some ideas further. These readings are not required. I will be updating this list fairly frequently. --Dpf 19:15, 26 June 2006 (MDT)

General Background

James Crutchfield, What Lies between Order and Chaos?, in Art and Complexity, J. Casti, editor, Oxford University Press (2002). An interesting, non-technical essay discussing how new patterns are discovered, and how complexity arises from the interplay between order and chaos. This is an excellent introduction to the notions of complexity and emergence, and history of one strand of the study of complex systems.

J.B. Rosser, On the Complexities of Complex Economic Dynamics. Journal of Economic Perspectives. 13:169-192. 1999. I've only read about half of this. It strikes me as a thorough, even-handed review of the applications of "complexity theory" to economics. Presents good spectrum of views, from those who think complexity is mostly hype, to those who believe it has contributed significant new understandings. Contains around 125 references. pdf format, for AEA members.

Cosma Shalizi, Methods and Techniques of Complex Systems Science: An Overview. Chapter 1 (pp. 33--114) in Thomas S. Deisboeck and J. Yasha Kresh (eds.), Complex Systems Science in Biomedicine (New York: Springer, 2006.) This is an excellent, thorough review of the "field" -- to the extent that there is such a thing -- of complex systems. Covers many tools: statistical learning and model selection; time series analysis; cellular automata; agent-based models; the evaluation of complex-systems models; information theory; and ways of measuring complexity. Contains over 250 references. Also available here.

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Readings Associated with Particular Lecturers

Lecturers are listed in order of appearance.

Andreas Wagner

Genome-scale Biological Networks. These are the slides that Andreas will use for his lectures. We will make hard copies available at the CSSS.

Henry Wright

This file introduces you to the web resources for Part 1 of Henry Wright's Presentation at the 2006 CSSS in Beijing. Here are some other readings associated with Henry Wright's talks:

• Brief Syllabus of Sources on the “Forager” Project
• Boundary Conditions for Paleolithic Social Systems: A Simultaion Approach. Martin Wobst.
• Archaological Systems Theory and Early Mesoamerica, Kent V. Flannery. In Anthropological Archaeology in the Americas. The Anthropological Society of Washington. 1968.
• The Research Problem, Kent V. Flannery. In Guila Naquitz: Archaic Foraging and Early Agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico, Ken V. Flannery, ed..
• The Modeling of Foraging Strategy: An Introduction to Part IV, Robert Reynolds. In Guila Naquitz: Archaic Foraging and Early Agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico, Kent V. Flannery, ed.

Dave Feldman

Annotated bibliography to accompany Dave's lectures. In addition to references specific to the lecture topics, there are also a number of general complex systems references.

• Lecture 1: Introduction to Chaos. Introductory Comments Part I Part II
• Lecture 2: Information Theory Part I Part II
• Lecture 3: Computation Theory.

Cosma Shalizi

• Lecture 1: Power Laws, What They Mean, How to Tell If You Have One

M. E. J. Newman, Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf's law, Contemporary Physics 46, 323-351 (2005). An excellent paper. Good background for Cosma's lecture on power laws.

C. R. Shalizi and K. L. Klinkner, "Blind Construction of Optimal Nonlinear Recursive Predictors for Discrete Sequences", Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence: Proceedings of the Twentieth Conference (UAI 2004), pp. 504--511. Best description of the CSSR algorithm; helpful for third lecture. cs.LG/0406011

K. L. Klinkner, C. R. Shalizi and M. F. Camperi, "Measuring Shared Information and Coordinated Activity in Neuronal Networks", Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 18 (NIPS 2005), pp. 667--674. Using CSSR to measure information sharing in networks (not just neural ones). q-bio.NC/0506009

Herb Gintis

Herbert Gintis, A Framework for the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, forthcoming 2006. Parts of Herb's lectures will be based on this paper.

Lee Altenberg

• Altenberg, L. , 2004. Open Problems in the Spectral Analysis of Evolutionary Dynamics presents a mathematical framework for evolutionary optimization and some of its unsolved problems.
• Altenberg, L. , 2004. Modularity in Evolution: Some Low Level Questions deconstructs the concept of modularity in terms of spaces of variation, and discusses properties needed for modularity to enhance evolvability.