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Syllabus

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CSCS 530 Winter 2012 Syllabus

NOTE -- the Syllabus and other pages are tentative for 2012
The course will be similar, but some things will change, depending on student backgrounds and interests.

Day-by-Day detailed syllabi:

• Syllabus for January
• Syllabus for February
• Syllabus for March
• Syllabus for April

Useful links

• A number of useful links, including instructions for setting up java/eclipse/repastJ on your own computer.
• Repast Simphony docs
  • Local RepastJ doc pages
  • RepastJ (java) source, docs
• Netlogo (docs), a agent-based modeling platform written in a language based on Logo (and *Logo), which provides a very nice, simple GUI interface for creating models with simple GUI interfaces. It can be run at CSCS by entering: netlogo on any CSCS machine. It has nice demo's and tutorials.
  • A Quick Guide: Attach:NetLogo-4-0-QuickGuide-1.pdf
  • Netlogo Code Snippets
• SwarmWikipedia list of ABM packages

Books and Readings

The readings cover three general areas:

• Programming -- Java, Repast
• Agent-Based Modeling in general
• Papers about specific models

Repast documentation is all online. There are many Intro to Java Books. Here is one i think is good:

• Java Concepts (5th edition). Cay Horstmann (2008). Wiley

But take a look at this and others in the Lab or at Borders and see which you like. There also are online books, eg this one is pretty good:

• JavaTech
• Java Ranch tutorial/lessons, for example:
  • Variables -- primitives and reference
  • Passing by value to methods
  • Polymorphism

These are highly recommended ABM-related books:

• Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life.
  John Miller and Scott Page (2007).
  Covers conceptual issues of modeling social systems.
• Agent-Based Models. Nigel Gilbert (2007).
  (SAGE Quantitative Applications in Social Sciences)
  A nice short book with lots of refs.
• Agent-based and Individual Based Modeling: A practical introduction.
  S.Railsback and V.Grimm (2011). An introduction to ABM using Netlogo
  * Individual-based Modeling and Ecology. V.Grimm and S.Railsback. (2005)
  Aimed at ecologists, but generally accessible and covers
  a wide range of conceptual and practical topics.

Copies of these are in the CSCS Lab for reading there. I may make one or two "required" -- in that I'll decide to include so many readings from them that you might as well just buy the book.

Papers about specific models which we will read in the second part of the term will all be from online copies of journals (via ctools, Mirlyn, etc).

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