Friday 17 June 2016

Presentation on Long-Term Migration in Korea Uploaded

I have uploaded my slides for the discussion of a physics-based approach to studying long-term human migration in Korea. I discussed this topic today after finishing with simulated annealing.

Wednesday 15 June 2016

Notes on Monte Carlo Methods and Computational Heuristics Uploaded

I have uploaded the scanned notes on Monte Carlo methods and computational heuristics. (Note that the Monte Carlo notes were already available when I uploaded the scanned notes on cellular automata.)

Monday 23 May 2016

Scanned Lecture Notes on Percolation and Self-Organized Criticality

I have scanned and uploaded the remaining lecture notes on percolation. (Note that the scanned lecture notes on power laws already included some discussion of percolation.)

Note (5/30/16): I should have stated this explicitly previously, but the some notes on self-organized criticality are also available at the end of the notes on percolation.

Some New Sources Among the Useful Links

I have added links to some more notes and articles among the 'useful links', including a new review article (just posted on arXiv) on opinion dynamics.

Tuesday 10 May 2016

Solution Sheet 2 Posted

I have posted solution sheet 2.

Lecture Notes on Power Laws Posted

I have posted lecture notes on power laws, including a scan of my notes and Stephen Haben's notes from last year.

Complex Systems Tarot Cards

Peter Dodds of University of Vermont has designed some spectacular complex systems tarot cards.

Words and Power Laws

I looked briefly again at Newman's article whence I got the example of word lengths and distributions. Here are a couple more comments on it:

(1) The circularity of the argument that we discussed is present directly in this paper, and Newman brings it up explicitly. If you want to pursue where things have progressed on this, you should look at the references to see what people have done.

(2) The error that I did make beyond the inherited logical issues are that when I introduced the example, I mistakenly used specific words in my introduction rather than length of words. That was just me messing up and unfortunately causing some confusion in the process.

Thursday 5 May 2016

Class 1

Class 1 is now scheduled: It will take place Friday week 3 (Friday the 13th ... bwahaha) at noon in room S0.29 in the Mathematical Institute.

We will cover bits of homework sheets 1 and 2, and we will definitely discuss the papers I asked you to read.

Thank you for your patience with the confused situation involving classes.

Sunday 1 May 2016

Essay Contest: Physics in 2116

Maybe some of you will be interested in Physics Today's essay contest to predict what physics will be like in 2116. Entries are due on 1 June.

Saturday 30 April 2016

Some Review Articles among the Useful Links

I added a link to a review article on statistical physics of social dynamics. That article has a bunch of cool stuff, and you should look at some of the other links as well.

Update on Classes

I have gotten the ok to do classes in an informal way. The first class won't be during the originally scheduled Tuesday at 10 am, because that conflicts with the schedule of some people. I'll send an e-mail to figure out what time we should meet, and realistically I think we should wait until I give you more problems before we meet to discuss things.

In another revision, homework should be submitted directly by e-mail to the TA (Roxana Feier).

I will wait until after the second 2-hour lecture before I write up another problem sheet.

Sunday 24 April 2016

Homework Sheet 1 Posted

I have posted homework sheet 1.

Lecture Notes for Parts 0 and 1 Uploaded

On the MI's page of course materials, I have uploaded lecture notes (one file) for Part 0 (introduction to complex systems) and Part 1 (fractals, iterated function systems, chaos, and related concepts). This file is a modified version of a file prepared by Stephen Haben last year. I made a decent number of updates in Part 0, but only a very tiny number of updates in Part 1.

Thursday 31 March 2016

Welcome to Complex Systems

Welcome to the Trinity Term 2016 course on complex systems at University of Oxford. This module is part of our masters program in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics.

The lectures will take place in the Mathematical Institute (room C4) on Mondays 14:00–16:00 in weeks 1–3 and 5–8 and also on Friday 10:00–12:00 in week 8. (I am away during week 4.)

The classes (with me as tutor and Roxana Feier as TA) will take place on Tuesdays from 10:00–11:00 in room C6 in weeks 2,3,5,7,8 and on Tuesday from 9:00–10:00 in room C5 in week 6. (Because I will be away, there also isn't a class in week 4.)

Homework sheets associated to a given week's class are to be submitted electronically by Monday at 9:00 in weeks 2,3,5–8.


(Note: later I will add some more links to the sidebar. I also still need to figure out homework assignments and other such things.)