Complexity Explorer Santa Few Institute

New on our homepage:   The Web of Life and the Ecological Human 

Connor O'Neil summarized Santa Fe Institute faculty member Jen Dunne's Public Ulam Lecture Series held in Santa Fe. Check it out for some fascinating insights into her research, great graphics, and a link to the full lectures on video.   

Course updates

Coming soon:  We are still working on three new tutorials for you: Matrix and Vector Algebra, Information Theory, and Computation Theory.  At least one of these should become available this month, keep an eye on the tutorials page!   

Current courses:  Fractals and Scaling is wrapping up November 13th, while Nonlinear Dynamics is ongoing until December 1st. Remember, even after the courses close, the videos and quizzes will remain available in the Archived Courses section.  We will be re-offering these in 2016 - stay tuned for the 2016 courses! 

Explore:

Have you spent much time in the explore section of our webpage? Every week we share a Glossary term and Complexity Resource through our social media.  We rely on volunteers to keep these sections growing.  If you would like to take a little time to help by adding glossary terms, or resources (books, papers, degrees, departments), we would greatly appreciate it.

First step - check that what you want to add isn't already on our Glossary or Resources pages. Then, go ahead and submit your contribution!

Add a complexity glossary term

Add a complexity resource

Coming soon to Explore: The Virtual Laboratory.  Stay tuned!

New on our homepage:   Sid Redner Q&A on Random Walks 

We interviewed Random Walks tutorial instructor Sid Redner.  Find out from him what you can learn when you take his Random Walks tutorial, and also what's so seductive about the arcsin law.  You can read his interview here, and take his course here.   

Course updates

Three tutorials coming soon:  We are in the process of developing three new tutorials for you. Matrix and Vector Algebra, Information Theory, and Computation Theory.  Stay tuned! And in the meantime, have you taken our latest tutorials, Maximum Entropy Methods and Random Walks?   

Current courses:  Fractals and Scaling and Nonlinear Dynamics are happening now! You can still join in these two fantastic courses if you haven't already.  Fractals and Scaling will end October 23rd, and Nonlinear Dynamics is set to end December 1st. 

Agent-based Modeling: The Agent-based Modeling course has been delayed and will now be launched in 2016.  We will let you know as soon as we have a clearer idea of the timeframe.  You just can't rush a good thing!

Subtitles and Transcripts available to download

In addition to being able to download videos for offline viewing, we are happy to announce that now you can download any available subtitles and transcripts for videos as well.  The download link for subtitles and transcripts will be displayed next to any video for which subtitles are available.  Check out our How-To guide on downloading and using the subtitle files here. 

We always need volunteers to help create subtitles, as well as collect web-based syllabi, glossary terms, and other resources related to complex systems.  See http://www.complexityexplorer.org/explore/get-involved to find out ways to get involved in our efforts. We congratulate those volunteers who earned a free t-shirt last month through their subtitling efforts. 

Complexity Explorer at CCS 2015:

Complexity Explorer Program Manager Gabrielle Beans attended the 2015 Conference on Complex Systems in Tempe, Arizona last week.  Look at our Twitter feed to catch her comments from the talks, or look up #CCS15 and #CCS_15 to catch snippets from the cutting edge of complex systems research. 

New on our homepage:   Liz Bradley and Dave Feldman Q&As 

We interviewed Nonlinear Dynamics course instructor Liz Bradley, and Fractals and Scaling course instructor Dave Feldman.  According to Liz, complex systems and nonlinear dynamics are two sides of the same coin.  Scaling behavior, covered in Dave's course, is frequently seen in complex systems. Read LIz's interview here, and Dave's interview here.   

Course updates: 

New mathematics tutorial:  Random Walks, taught by Sid Redner (Santa Fe Institute).  Random walks have been used to understand diverse phenomena in many fields, for example economics, computer science, physics, chemistry, biology and sports. Sign up for the tutorial to learn more.  

New course starting:  Fractals and scaling will be offered starting on September 1, 2015.  Enrollment is open! This is an exciting new course from Dave Feldman open to anyone with some basic algebra.  

New re-offering: Nonlinear Dynamics will be offered for a second time by Liz Bradley starting September 1, 2015.  Enroll now! Liz has made some interesting changes and is bringing more applications into her course.  This is an essential area to understand on your way to becoming a complexity scholar. 

Help us subtitle Complexity Explorer's videos:

Our new, streamlined subtitling system is ready and we need volunteers to help subtitle our videos!  English and Spanish subtitles are particularly needed, but any language would be very useful.  If you subtitle two hours of video we will send you a free Complexity Explorer T-shirt, shipped free anywhere in the world.  See http://www.complexityexplorer.org/explore/volunteer-to-subtitle-videos for information on how to sign up. 

We also always need volunteers to help collect web-based syllabi, glossary terms, and other resources related to complex systems.  See http://www.complexityexplorer.org/explore/get-involved to find out ways to get involved in our efforts. 

Staff updates:

We welcome Connor O'Neil as a new member of Complexity Explorer's team.  Connor O'Neil is an Administrative Assistant for the Santa Fe Institute's Education and Outreach group.  You will likely interact with him through our email accounts and forums.  He is also helping with writing up our news stories.  Welcome Connor! Connor is the human in the picture next to Complexity Explorer team dog Nina Simone. 

New on our homepage:   Connor O'Neil describes a Complexity Panel

A thought-provoking glimpse into the inner workings of the Santa Fe Institute's Complex Systems Summer School.

Course updates:  New fall courses open for enrollment

Enrollment Open:  We are delighted to announce that Elizabeth Bradley's course Nonlinear Dynamics and David Feldman's brand new course on Fractals and Scaling are both open for enrollment.  Both courses start September 1st, 2015.  Sign up; spread the word and get a friend, colleague or family member to join in.

Tutorials: The different mathematics tutorials making up Mathematics for Complex Systems are being separated out into individual tutorials.  Once this process is finished, you will be able to track your completion of each tutorial the way you currently do with courses.  Keep an eye out for this much needed organizational overhaul in August!

Change in Subtitling Process:

Coming soon: an exciting, more streamlined method for creating subtitles for Complexity Explorer videos.  What will this mean for our dedicated translation volunteers? No more waiting for assignments; picking and choosing the videos you want to work on yourself; your subtitling minutes will be collected automatically and you will still get a t-shirt once you complete 120 minutes! We will let you know as soon as this new system is ready.

We also always need volunteers to help collect web-based syllabi, glossary terms, and other resources related to complex systems.  See http://www.complexityexplorer.org/explore/get-involved to find out ways to get involved in our efforts. 

New on our homepage:   Simon DeDeo talks about his MaxEnt tutorial:

Find out how MaxEnt can help you distinguish the truly complex from what is just complicated

Course updates: 

Course Open:  Introduction to Complexity is live starting today!  Over 2,000 people have enrolled.  It's not too late to sign up; spread the word and get a friend, colleague or family member to join in.

New Tutorials: We are working hard to bring you more tutorials from the Mathematics for Complex Systems series.  Currently in production: Random Walks by SFI faculty Sid Redner (prerequisite: Calculus, Fourier Transforms). Stay tuned!

Volunteers Needed:

We need volunteers to help subtitle our videos!  English and Spanish subtitles are particularly needed, but any language would be very useful.  You can choose to subtitle as little as a 3-minute video, or subtitle two hours of video to win a free Complexity Explorer T-shirt, shipped free anywhere in the world.    See http://www.complexityexplorer.org/explore/volunteer-to-subtitle-videos for information on how to sign up. 

We also need volunteers to help collect web-based syllabi, glossary terms, and other resources related to complex systems.  Seehttp://www.complexityexplorer.org/explore/get-involved to find out ways to get involved in our efforts. 

New on our homepage:   The Accidental Universe:

A Summary of Alan Lightman's recent SFI Community Lecture

Course updates: 

New mathematics tutorial:  Maximum Entropy Methods, taught by Simon DeDeo (Indiana University and Santa Fe Institute).  Max Ent is an essential method for people who want to learn to model complex systems. This tutorial requires some knowledge of calculus. 

Reminder:  Introduction to Complexity will be (re)offered starting on July 6, 2015.  Enrollment is open!

Resources updates:

We are merging our "important citations" list into our Resources list.  To see a sample, go to the Resources page, browse by "Category", and scroll down to see the various kinds of books we have listed.  You're encouraged as always to submit resources to our database.

Staff updates:

We welcome Gabrielle (Gabby) Beans as SFI's new Program Manager for Online Education.  Gabby will be taking over most of the administrative and planning duties for Complexity Explorer.  Gabby, who has a Ph.D. in Genetics from Massey University in New Zealand, comes to us from her most recent jobs as an educator for SFI's Learning Lab and the Santa Fe Watershed Association.