ICPSR Summer School

Complex Systems Models in the Social Sciences
ICPSR Summer School Session II: 21 July - 14 August 2003

Instructors:
Kenneth Kollman, UM Political Science;
Scott Page, UM Political Science and UM Center for Study of Complex Systems;
Rick Riolo, UM Center for Study of Complex Systems;

TA's for computer lab: Moira Zellner; Urban Tech & Environ Plan
Veronica Reyna ; Political Science

Note: The first class, Monday 21 July, will be Noon - 1:00pm. All other lectures will be 9:00am - 10:00am. All lectures will be in MLB Lecture Room #1.

Under Construction

The Course syllabus is available as pdf version
(or html pr msword version)

This course will have 7 computer sessions, which will be organized during the first two lectures. The sessions will meet 6.30-8.00pm, Tues-Thurs, 22-24 July, and Mon-Thurs, 28-31 July, in the ICPSR (East) computer lab.

The computer exercises will actually be run remotely, on the computers in the UM's Center for the Study of Complex Systems Computer Lab, 4477 Randall Building (located on the east side of the central campus diag).

For more information about the CSCS computers, visit the Computer Lab Documentation page. That page has pointers to important information, including how to change your CSCS password, what machines are available, printing, and so on. In particular please read:

• CSCS Computer Lab -- Conditions of Use
• CSCS Lab Introduction (logins, passwords, remote use, etc.)
• CSCS Computer Lab FAQ and answers

There is a Swiki (web-based communication/collaboration tool) here. If you have never used a Swiki, please feel free to just play around with it...see the built in help to get started. (You will need to enter username/pw from the handout on first lab class.)

Lecture Notes

• Monday 21 July (Ken K): Introduction (ppt)

• Monday 28 July (Rick R): Introduction to CAS and ABM(pdf, postscript)
• Tuesday 29 July (Rick R): Who interacts with whom? (pdf, postscript)
  

Computer Handouts

Tuesday 22 July -- Getting started; Demo of Schelling's Segregation Model (Swarm)

• Intro to Lab Sessions (pdf)
• Getting started: logging in, etc getting-started.txt (plain text)
• "Script" for Tues 22 July: demo1-script (plain text)
• writeHelp documentation for the Tipping2 program (plain text)
• writeHelp documentation for the IPDm0 program (plain text)
• A short introduction to basic, useful commands in linux (plain text)

Wednesday 23 July -- Axelrod's Cultural diversity model (Swarm)

• Demo instructions for the Axelcult program (plain text)
• How to run experiments to replicate Axelrod's cultural model experiments
• writeHelp documentation for the Axelcult program (plain text)

Thursday 24 July -- Netlogo Introduction

• Notes on getting started with NetLogo (ascii)
• Netlogo online doc pages (tutorials, ref manual, etc)

Monday 28 July -- Continue with Netlogo

• A condensed introduction to NetLogo.
• Schellings Segregation model procedures (From the Netlogo->Models->SocialScience section)
• Some suggested exercises, modifying the NetLogo Segregation model
• High level view of programming in general. notes-WhatIsProgramming.txt (plain text)

Tuesday 29 July -- Prisoner's Dilemma Models (Swarm,NetLogo)

• Some notes on running the IPD m0 model (intro-run-ipdm0.txt -- plain text) (Nowak/May and Epstein models)
• writeHelp documentation for the IPDm0 program (plain text)

Wednesday 30 July -- Modify/Create NetLogo model(s)

Thursday 31 July -- Modify/Create NetLogo model(s)

Some pointers to Agent-Based modeling readings and packages:

• A page with some introductory readings, and pointers to a few software packages
• Swarm, an objective-C and Java based package.
• Pointers to documentation for programming in Swarm: programming-docs.txt (plain text)
• RePast: Java-based package, based on Swarm architecture. Emphasis on tools for Social Science models.
• NetLogo, Java based; Architecture modeled after StarLogo (*Logo). Focus is perhaps on contructing educational models.
• AScape Java-based package, based on SugarScape architecture. Emphasis on tools for Social Science models.
• AgentSheets: Java-based package. Commercial. Not focused on any particular discipline. Provides "visual programming" approach.
  
• Tutorial on RePast and Netlogo, including models that are implemented in both, for comparison.

See rlr's home page and the cscs websites page for other packages and tools.

The ICPSR is the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, a pat of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research (ISR). The ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research offers a comprehensive, integrated program of studies in research design, statistics, data analysis, and social methodology.

For more information about the ICPSR summer school, please press here. For more information about this course from ICPSR, please press here.

Last years (2002) pages.