Goals of the course

• To learn about the area of complex systems.
• To practice system thinking and critical thinking.
• To practice communication and presentation skills.

Organization of the course

• Course requirements: participate actively during the semester, present one presentation, create final project (write an article or create a video).
• At the core of the course are student presentations about complex systems (see this year topics below). The selection of particular topics will take place at beginning of the semester. Presentation must be in English.
• The seminar focuses on presentation skills. After each presentation there will be not just discussion about the topic, but also a short guided feedback session about the presentation itself.
• For final project at the end of the semester you can choose one of the following options. In both cases the project should be about the same topic as your presentation and it is permited to do the project in Czech or Slovak.
  • Write an article in a style of a "popular science magazine" (e.g., New Scientist, Scientific American, Vesmír).
  • Create an "educational video" (length: 7-15 minutes). To get inspiration about possible style of the video, you can check my videos (in Czech), which were created using CamStudio and VirtualDub.

Topics

• social insect, ants, bacteria, cells
• recommender systems, collaborative filtering (e.g., Amazon, Netflix)
• collective intelligence, swarm intelligence, ant colony optimization
• traffic simulation, traffic jams
• crowds modeling, decentralized rebellion, riots
• phase transition
• dynamics of complex networks (e.g., epidemics, spread of information)
• decentralized systems like Internet, social networks, Wikipedia
• cooperation in decentralized environments, prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons, (evolution of) altruism