Cosma's overview of Complexity Science

[Friam mailing list]

Good Cosma Shalizi article on current state of Complexity. I like his review of
ABM.

http://arxiv.org/abs/nlin.AO/0307015

TITLE: Methods and Techniques of Complex Systems Science: An Overview

ABSTRACT: In this chapter, I review the main methods and techniques of complex
systems science. As a first step, I distinguish among the broad patterns which
recur across complex systems, the topics complex systems science commonly
studies, the tools employed, and the foundational science of complex systems.
The focus of this chapter is overwhelmingly on the third heading, that of tools.
These in turn divide, roughly, into tools for analyzing data, tools for
constructing and evaluating models, and tools for measuring complexity. I
discuss the principles of statistical learning and model selection; time series
analysis; cellular automata; agent-based models; the evaluation of
complex-systems models; information theory; and ways of measuring complexity.
Throughout, I give only rough outlines of techniques, so that readers,
confronted with new problems, will have a sense of which ones might be suitable,
and which ones definitely are not.

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