Aaron Clauset

Aaron Clauset [homepage] is an Omidyar fellow at the Santa Fe Institute (since 2006), and will be an assistant professor in computer science at CU Boulder starting Fall 2010. He is an alumnus of the CSSS 2003 (Santa Fe), and has been a lecturer at the Santa Fe summer school since 2007, and the Beijing summer school since 2008.

Santa Fe School

This year, Clauset will deliver a lecture on Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for simulation and inference in complex systems. To be best prepared for the lecture, you should take a look at these papers. The first is the most relevant, with the others being more background material.

• "Hierarchical structure and the prediction of missing links in networks." Clauset, Moore and Newman. Nature 453, 98-101 (2008).
• Monte Carlo Methods in Statistical Physics. Newman and Barkema. Oxford University Press (1999).
• "An Introduction to MCMC for Machine Learning." Andrieu, de Freitas, Doucet and Jordan. Machine Learning 50, 5-43 (2003).

Beijing School

Clauset will deliver three lectures; two will cover the basics of complex networks and network analysis, and one will cover the estimation and validation of power-law distributions in empirical data. To be best prepared for the lecture, you should take a look at these two papers.

• "Power-law distributions in empirical data." A. Clauset, C. R. Shalizi and M. E. J. Newman. arXiv:0706.1062 (2007).
• "The structure and function of complex networks." M. E. J. Newman, SIAM Review 45, 167-256 (2003)