Intro

[Rick Riolo]

Hi,
I have a number of strange appointments here at UM,
one being 'director' of the PSCS computer lab (currently
5 HPs), which means I do some (as little as possible) sysadmin,
I import software that might interest people interested
in complex adaptive systems (broadly conceived), talk to
students interested in complex systems, and I also
give occasional short classes on some of the packages
(eg 'intro to Genetic Algorithms', and soon 'Intro
to Swarm').

One Swarm related project I am involved in is working
with Michael Cohen and Bob Axelrod to (re-)implement
a number of 'social science' agent-based models
in Swarm, one goal being to learn something about
what is in common amoung these models and what kind
of classes, tools, etc are useful for these models.
Some of the models include Schelling's 'tipping' model
(see his Micromotives and Macrobehaviors book),
Kaufmann etal's NK-patches model, Axelrod's interated
PD model, Cohen's 'garbage can' model of organizational
learning, and a couple of others (including some kind
of agent-based economics model).  So far I have
three going (tipping,nkp, and a model on organizational
learning by James March).

One student here has expressed an interested in
re-doing Holland's Echo model in Swarm.

I am also working on implementing a (mostly Michigan)
style classifier system in Swarm, or actually,
a system with multiple classifier systems interacting
with each other (one reason to do it in Swarm).

Its likely I'll try some other projects in Swarm as well,
(if I can get some students interested).
I find Swarm and Objective-C are growing on me...
like a fungus? ;-)...

Advice:
I finally just got the NextStep Objective-C book:
Borders here in A2 didn't have it and said it is 
out of print, but they did eventually track
down a copy for me.  If they are right about it being
out of print, I would suggest getting yourself a copy asap,
as I didn't find any of the other books particularly useful.

Don't be afraid to ask this list for help.
People have been responsive and very helpful
(given the spread of users over the globe, and the strange
hours they keep, you can get an answer at the oddest times).

 - r

Rick Riolo                       address@hidden
Program for Study of Complex Systems (PSCS)
1061 Randall Lab     University of Michigan
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1120
http://pscs.physics.lsa.umich.edu/rlr-home.html