2014 Complexity and Modeling Program Word Wall

2014 Complexity and Modeling Program Navigation Home Logistics CAMP Participants Surveys Faculty Schedule Readings Software Word Wall Project Page

Complex vs. Complicated

Complex: individual behaviors and local interactions, goal-specific emergent structure, scale-dependent predictability and unpredictability, high level of throughput.

Complicated: is deliberate, has specific goal driven behavior, predictable behavior at all scales, system throughout manages within specifications.

-Leaderless: individual behaviors and local interactions not directed by central organization or control.
-Emergent: unexpected structure that comes from a system that does not have a direct connection to the system.
-Nonlinear: inputs and outputs are related but not in a linear fashion. Highly sensitive initial and ambient conditions.
-Self-organizing: organization comes from within the system and is nonhierarchical

Santa Fe Institute Online Courses on Complexity

Word Wall

Please add terms to the word wall!

Chaos:

A phenomenon seen in dynamical systems, in which the system's future behavior is highly sensitive to the initial conditions of the system. See also butterfly effect.

Feedback:

is a process in which information about the past or the present influences the same phenomenon in the present or future. As part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop, the event is said to "feed back" into itself.

Hierarchy:

Abstractly, a hierarchy can be modelled mathematically as a rooted tree: the root of the tree forms the top level, and the children of a given vertex are at the same level, below their common parent.

Occam's Razor:

The one with the fewest assumptions should be selected==

Pheromone

is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting outside the body of the secreting individual to impact the behavior of the receiving individual.

Prisoner’s Dilemma

is a canonical example of a game analyzed in game theory that shows why two purely "rational" individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so.

Sierpinski Triangle

is a fractal and attractive fixed set with the overall shape of an equilateral triangle, subdivided recursively into smaller equilateral triangles.

Stigmergy

Stigmergy is a form of self-organization. It produces complex, seemingly intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even direct communication between the agents.

Stochasticity

A system is whose state is non-deterministic (i.e., "random")

Superfluid

Superfluidity is a state of matter in which the matter behaves like a fluid with zero viscosity; where it appears to exhibit the ability to self-propel and travel in a way that defies the forces of gravity and surface tension.