Think Complexity

Allen B. Downey

Version 1.2.3

• Preface
  • Why I wrote this book
  • Suggestions for teachers
  • Suggestions for autodidacts
  • Contributor List
• Complexity Science
  • What is this book about?
  • A new kind of science
  • Paradigm shift?
  • The axes of scientific models
  • A new kind of model
  • A new kind of engineering
  • A new kind of thinking
• Graphs
  • What’s a graph?
  • Representing graphs
  • Random graphs
  • Connected graphs
  • Paul Erdős: peripatetic mathematician, speed freak
  • Iterators
  • Generators
• Analysis of algorithms
  • Order of growth
  • Analysis of basic Python operations
  • Analysis of search algorithms
  • Hashtables
  • Summing lists
  • pyplot
  • List comprehensions
• Small world graphs
  • Analysis of graph algorithms
  • FIFO implementation
  • Stanley Milgram
  • Watts and Strogatz
  • Dijkstra
  • What kind of explanation is that?
• Scale-free networks
  • Zipf’s Law
  • Cumulative distributions
  • Continuous distributions
  • Pareto distributions
  • Barabási and Albert
  • Zipf, Pareto and power laws
  • Explanatory models
• Cellular Automata
  • Stephen Wolfram
  • Implementing CAs
  • CADrawer
  • Classifying CAs
  • Randomness
  • Determinism
  • Structures
  • Universality
  • Falsifiability
  • What is this a model of?
• Game of Life
  • Implementing Life
  • Life patterns
  • Conway’s conjecture
  • Realism
  • Instrumentalism
  • Turmites
• Fractals
  • Fractal CAs
  • Percolation
• Self-organized criticality
  • Sand piles
  • Spectral density
  • Fast Fourier Transform
  • Pink noise
  • Reductionism and Holism
  • SOC, causation and prediction
• Agent-based models
  • Thomas Schelling
  • Agent-based models
  • Traffic jams
  • Boids
  • Prisoner’s Dilemma
  • Emergence
  • Free will
• Case study: Sugarscape
  • The Original Sugarscape
  • The Occupy movement
  • A New Take on Sugarscape
  • Taxation and the Leave Behind
  • The Gini coefficient
  • Results With Taxation
  • Conclusion
• Case study: Ant trails
  • Introduction
  • Model Overview
  • API design
  • Sparse matrices
  • wx
  • Applications
• Case study: Directed graphs and knots
  • Directed Graphs
  • Implementation
  • Detecting knots
  • Knots in Wikipedia
• Case study: The Volunteer’s Dilemma
  • The prairie dog’s dilemma
  • Analysis
  • The Norms Game
  • Results
  • Improving the chances
• Call for submissions
• Reading list
• Index