Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science Modeling and Complexity - Useful Resources

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Resources

Computer packages and libraries

• Eclipse Eclipse is an integrated development environment (IDE) that makes programming and debugging orders of magnitudes easier.
• R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.
  • with many useful packages
  • R interface for Python: RPy
  • R pugin for Eclipse: StatET
• SAGE Creating a viable free open source alternative toMagma, Maple, Mathematica, and Matlab.
• MASON - Java-based toolkit for multiagent simulation.
• ECJ Evolutionary computation toolkit in Java that dovetails with MASON.
• Repast Simphony is a free and open source agent-based modeling toolkit written in Java.
• Ascape Java-based agent-based modeling toolkit developed at the Brookings Institution by Miles T. Parker.
• NetLogo NetLogo is a cross-platform multi-agent procedural programmable modeling environment.
• Framsticks Framsticks is an artificial life package for evolving 3-D creatures with neural network nervous systems.
• breve Open-source, cross-platform 3d simulation in python or steve (with good creature evolution examples)
• This page has a summary of software and toolkits for agent-based and complex adaptive systems: [1]
• Another page about programs for agent based modeling: [2]
• igraph: package for creating and manipulating undirected and directed graphs. Has interfaces to many different programming languages.
• PyGene - a simple library for genetic algorithms and genetic programming in python

Guides and Tutorials

• AgentModelingGuide Robert Axelrod and Leigh Tesfatsion's On-Line Guide for Newcomers to Agent-Based Modeling in the Social Sciences
• RepastGuide Leigh Tesfatsion's Self-Study Guide for Java-Based Repast
• AscapeTutorial What is Ascape and Why Should You Care? Miles T. Parker's intro and tutorial to Ascape published in JASSS.
• EclipseABM Guides to using the Eclipse IDE with agent-based modeling environments including MASON, RePast, and Ascape.

Interesting Related Works

• Reimplementation of Axelrod's "Evolution of Cooperation": Reimplementation and re-experimentation of the famous Axelrod's paper, where after tuning some parameters it is observed how results provided by Axelrod where not complete.
• Evolutionary Conditions for the Emergence of Communication in Robots Floreano et al., Current Biology, 2007.
• Solving traveling salesman problems with DNA molecules encoding numerical values Lee et al., Biosystems, 2004.
• Coupled replicator equations for the dynamics of learning in multiagent systems Sato & Crutchfield, Physical Review E, 2003.
• Interesting article from Wired: The End of Theory: The Data Deluge.
  • And an interesting response from Shalizi, i.e. why the Wired article is crap.