The spring semester 2021 will certainly take place online until Easter. Exceptions: Courses that can only be carried out with on-site presence. Please note the information provided by the lecturers.
Prerequisites: Basic programming skills, elementary probability and statistics.
Catalogue data
Abstract
This course introduces mathematical and computational models to study techno-socio-economic systems and the process of scientific research. Students develop a significant project to tackle techno-socio-economic challenges in application domains of complex systems. They are expected to implement a model and communicating their results through a seminar thesis and a short oral presentation.
Objective
The students are expected to know a programming language and environment (Python, Java or Matlab) as a tool to solve various scientific problems. The use of a high-level programming environment makes it possible to quickly find numerical solutions to a wide range of scientific problems. Students will learn to take advantage of a rich set of tools to present their results numerically and graphically.
The students should be able to implement simulation models and document their skills through a seminar thesis and finally give a short oral presentation.
Content
Students are expected to implement themselves models of various social processes and systems, including agent-based models, complex networks models, decision making, group dynamics, human crowds, or game-theoretical models.
Part of this course will consist of supervised programming exercises. Credit points are finally earned for the implementation of a mathematical or empirical model from the complexity science literature and the documentation in a seminar thesis.
Lecture notes
The lecture slides will be presented on the course web page after each lecture.
Literature
Literature, in particular regarding computer models in the (computational) social sciences, will be provided in the course.
Prerequisites / Notice
The number of participants is limited to the size of the available computer teaching room. The source code related to the seminar thesis should be well enough documented.
Good programming skills and a good understanding of probability & statistics and calculus are expected.
Performance assessment
Performance assessment information (valid until the course unit is held again)
Performance assessment as a semester course
: Special students and auditors need a special permission from the lecturers