UCLA Course on Computational Social Science (PoliSci 209-2)

[Benedikt Stefansson]

The UCLA Department of Political Science will be sponsoring a course on Agent
Based Modeling in Swarm this Winter quarter, (Political Science 209-2:
Computational Social Science)

The objective of this course is to introduce social scientists, students and
faculty members to Agent Based Modeling based on the Swarm libraries, an Object
Oriented simulation toolbox developed by the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico.

Our first regular meeting will be on Monday January 12th at 11:00 AM in Bunche
Hall, Room 4269. We will be meeting every week on Mondays from 11:00 AM to 2:00
PM, except for the following three meetings, when the class will be moved to
Wednesday, same room and same time:

   January 19th (Martin Luther King Jr. Day) -> Wednesday January 21st
   February 9th  -> Wednesday February 11th
   February 16th (Washington's Birthday) -> Wednesday February 18th

A rough outline of the course follows. Material and updated information for this
course will be found at:
     http://cce.sscnet.ucla.edu/swarmcourse/syllabusW98.htmlI.Week - 
Introduction
to Swarm and overview of the course:
        Monday January 12th        + Introduction and demonstration of Swarm
capabilities.        + Overview - programming tools and evolution of a 
simulation
program.II-IV Week - The C programming language         Wednesday January 21st
        +  Practical programming - the editor, compiler and debugger.
        +  Basic data types and operators.        +  Control and data
flow.         Monday January 26th
        + Functions and program structure
        + Input and output.         Monday February 2nd
        + Memory allocation and data (pointers and arrays).

V.Week - Object Oriented Programming

        Wednesday February 11th        + Introduction to Object Oriented
Programming.        + Objective-C syntax.VI.Week - Swarm: first steps
        Wednesday February 18th       + Evolving a simple model from basic C, to
Objective-C to Swarm.VII-VII.Week - The Swarm libraries
       Monday February 23rd       + Structure of a Swarm program, schedules and
collections.       + Probe library and graphical output.IX.-X Week - Swarm in
practice
       Monday March 2nd       + Case studies:            Implementations of
Epstein and Axtell (Sugarscape), Schelling's           segregation model and
Axelrod's model of culture.       Monday March 9th
       + Adaptive Agents, implementation and practical problems. GAs,
ANNs           Finite State Machines and other "learning algorithms".

------------------
Benedikt Stefansson                         address@hidden
Department of Economics, UCLA    Fax. (310) 825-9528
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1477         Tel. (310)  825-4126



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