Unit 12 (Virtual Field Trip) is online.   Get ready to travel!

Unit 11 is up!

For solution to optional Unit 6 (Cellular Automata) homework, Intermediate, Option 1, see http://s3.amazonaws.com/complexityexplorer/HW6.Solution.Intermediate.Option1.pdf

Unit 9 Homework is back online. 

If you haven't already submitted  HW 9 but downloaded the Unit9Homework.pdf file, please re-download it -- the questions have changed. 

Please email us with any problems: admin@complexityexplorer.org

We are revising Unit 9 homework due to some errors.  It's temporarily offline -- it will be reposted tomorrow. 

If you have already submitted it, that's fine, you don't need to redo it.

If you haven't submitted it yet but have downloaded the Unit 9 Homework pdf file, please download this file again tomorrow, after we've revised it. 

Thanks for your patience.

 

Units 9 and 10 are online. 

In Unit 9, there are some optional (advanced) videos, marked as such.  All the Netlogo models for this unit are optional. 

Unit 10 is an interview with Luis Bettencourt, an SFI professor who works on urban scaling. 

Unit 11 (Networks) will be up soon....

We still plan to have all units and the final exam online by May 10, but will extend the time allowed for you to finish all homework and the final until June 30. 

There was an error in the Unit 8 homework question 6.  We've fixed the error in the homework submission and in the writeup -- it says "set diffusion rate to 10".

If you submitted your homework and got this question wrong, please e-mail admin@complexityexplorer.org

We will reset your homework if you request.

Unit 8 Homework can now be submitted -- the submission system is fixed. 

If you want to be able to change the speed on the videos, you need to sign up for the html5 trial at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/html5.  Once you do that, you will be able to go to "Settings" in the video window to change the speed. 

Unit 8 Homework writeup can be downloaded from Course Materials page.  Homework submission system is temporarily down (due to a bug) -- will be up again ASAP. 

Unit 8 videos and quizzes are up.  Homework for Unit 8 will be up tomorrow. 

Apologies for delay in getting Unit 8 online.  It will be up by Monday.  Unit 9 will be up a few days after that.

Unit 7 is online! 

On our Forum page, you can now set up your profile, search all forums, and check out new posts (see the buttons above the Forums list).

If you're interested, you can subscribe to the SFI Bulletin, Update, and other materials at http://santafe.edu/follow-us/

New schedule: Final exam must be completed between May 10 and May 31 in order to earn certificate of completion.

All of Unit 6 (including Homework) is now online.

Unit 6.1 and 6.2 are up

Unit 4 Optional Homework Video Walk-throughs are up.

All of Unit 5 is up. Download Homework 5 from Course Materials page.

Lecture slides (pdf format) are available for Units 1-4. Download from "Lecture Slides" part of Course Materials page.

First three parts of Unit 5 are up.

Videos 1.7-1.9 are now repaired.

Solutions (videos) to Unit 3 optional homework are now available under Unit 3.

If the system leads you to these and you don't want to watch them, just click on "Mark as Complete" at the bottom of the video page.

A course participant, Ben Levi, has made his extensive notes (~transcripts) on the guest spots available. This may be useful particularly for non-native English speakers. Thanks, Ben!

We have a new forum structure. When you go to the Forum link, you will see a list of major topics, so when making a new post, please post under the appropriate topic. If you want to suggest a new major topic, post your suggestion under Forum Feedback.

Homework4.pdf has been fixed. If you downloaded it before March 12, 9am PDT, please redownload. If you had problems with the homework due to previous version, let us know: admin@complexityexplorer.org.

If you downloaded SlotMachine.nlogo a few days ago, please download it again -- it's been updated to include the required macrostates for Homework 4.

See Homework4.pdf for ungraded homework problems for Unit 4.

All of Unit 4 and Homework 4 are now up.

We will soon split the Forum into different topic threads for the different units of the course, and for other topics. This will make things easier to find. Stay tuned.

If you can't wait to learn about Shannon information, here's a nice, brief primer by T. D. Schneider. Readable if you are comfortable with exponents, logarithms, summation signs, and such. Geared towards biologists, so uses genetics as an example.

4.3 and 4.4 are up. Sorry for delay in 4.5, 4.6, and homework -- we'll get those up as soon as possible.

Note that I posted Jim Crutchfield's interview before the segment on Shannon information, so consider it to be a "preview" -- it might make more sense after you learn about Shannon information.

We are aware of the sound and video quality problems in videos 1.7-1.9 (Unit 1). We are in the process of redoing these -- they should be up next week.

The Forum is finally here! Check it out under the "Forum" link. I'll also be emailing about it.

Please use the forum for posting questions/comments related to the course.

If you want to change how your name appears on your posts, go to the "My Account" link at the top right of the webpage, and change "Name to Display in Forums", and then click on "Update Account".

If you have any problems using the forum, email admin@complexityexplorer.org

Video solutions to optional parts of Homework 2 are now up, in the lectures list under Unit 2. Downloadable versions of these should be available by tomorrow.

First two parts of Unit 4 are up -- more coming soon.

Some additions to the course FAQ, explaining the grading and certificate policy:

How is the course graded? There will be 10 homework assignments and one final exam, all to be submitted online. Each homework assignment will count for 5%, and the final exam will count for 50%. All are open-notes, open-book, open-internet. Once you finish all homework assignments and the final exam, you will receive a total course score, as a percentage from 0 to 100. Of course, since the course is not for credit, your scores are meant to be for your own tracking of your progress in the course. They will not be seen by anyone but you, and possibly our course team.

How well do I need to do to receive a certificate, and will the certificate list my grade? You need to have a total course score of 60% or greater to receive a certificate of successful completion. The certificate will not list your total score; it will simply say that you have successfully completed this course.

All of Unit 3 (Fractals) is up, including Homework 3.

Here's the URL for the Khan Academy logarithms tutorial: https://www.khanacademy.org/math/algebra/logarithms-tutorial

Unit 1 videos available for download -- much smaller files this time!

Thanks to everyone who pointed out our error on Quiz 2 in Unit 3.2! It's now corrected.

Video tutorials are now available for the optional NetLogo programming challenges in Homework 1, as Lecture 1.11.

Unit 3 (Fractals) will be up on Monday, Feb. 25.

For people who are writing the code for Ant1.nlogo and Ant2.nlogo, apologies that the text in the videos is hard to see. We're redoing those videos to fix this. People have complained that they can't see the hypens. Note that in Ant1.nlogo, the variable "coin-flip?" has a hypen. In Ant2.nlogo the variable "food-eaten" has a hypen as does "max-step-size" and "max-turn-angle", as does "to-report" and "grow-food". If your version is not working, download these models from the Course Materials page and compare the code.

Unit 2 videos are now available for direct download.

We will soon be able to provide lower-resolution videos for download (i.e., smaller file sizes) -- this will take a few days.

Users can now direct download videos. This is available for Unit 1, and will soon be available for Unit 2. Here are the details.

Here's a pdf of today's email announcement, in case it didn't appear in your email.

Homework 2: Make sure you set x0=.2000000 (.2 followed by six zeros) and x0'=.2000001 (.2 followed by five zeros and a 1).

Homework 2 is up. See Homework2.pdf on Course Materials page. Submit at the Homework 2 link on the Lectures sidebar.

Lectures 2.6 and 2.7 are up. Homework 2 coming tomorrow. Fractals will be in Unit 3.

Lecture 2.6 will be up soon! Thanks for yr patience. In the meantime, take a look at the optional readings on the Course Materials page.

Another excellent, and less math-y article on chaos, from Leo Kadanoff: : Chaos: A view of complexity in the physical sciences

Classic, and fairly readable, paper on Logistic Map, chaos, etc. by Mitchell Feigenbaum: Universal behavior in nonlinear systems. Warning -- there is math.

New feature on our website: Videos will be checked off when you finish watching them. You can also control this manually: on each video, under the video window, you can "Mark as Complete" or "Mark as Uncomplete" to have the video checked off on the sidebar.

A course participant set up a Google map where MOOC participants can pin their locations

Homeworks have no specific due date; you simply need to finish them by the end of the course.

Videos for 2.4 and 2.5 are now up.

We are planning to redo the videos for 1.7 and 1.8 to have better sound. In the meantime, if you are having trouble with the volume, try watching them with headphones, earbuds, or external speakers, and the volume will be much better.

The first three parts of Unit 2 are up! Rest to follow soon.

We're trying to track down a problem some people are having with the volume being too low (or having no sound) on some of the videos. If you have had this problem, can you email admin@complexityexplorer.org, and say what videos you had problems with, what the problem was exactly, and what browser you are using (e.g., Internet Explorer 9; Firefox 18.0.2, etc.). Thank you!! If the sound has been fine for you, no need to reply.

Unit 2 will be up by Tuesday, Feb 12; thanks for your patience.

From a course participant: The Google+ Group began swapping inspirational books on Complexity, so now there is a Goodreads Group for collecting these.

If you are not logged in, we can't answer questions you submit to our Forum page, since we can't see your e-mail address.

Because of the problems with submitting Homework 1 that some people encountered, we're not going to count its score toward your grade. However, if you haven't already done it, I recommend trying it!

Up-to-the-minute current enrollment counter

Unit 2 will be up by Monday, Feb. 11

If you are still having problems with submitting Homework 1, email us at admin@complexityexplorer.org

For those who are interested, a course participant has created a Facebook group for this course.

Hints for Homework 1 on our Forum

For any who are interested, a course participant has set up discussions of this course on Google+ and Reddit

If you build the Ant2.nlogo model from scratch, make sure the "World wraps horizontally" and World wraps vertically" checkboxes are unchecked

We have fixed the bug in the homework, but as a result the submission got lost in some people's progress reports. Apologies -- if this happened to you, please resubmit your answers.

Homework problem has been fixed!

There is suddenly a bug in the homework submission code -- the answers are being displayed instead of the blank homework! Sorry! We're working on this. In the meantime, put off submitting your homework.

Our videos are currently hosted on YouTube, which is blocked in some countries. We are working on a remedy for this, but it might take some time.

We have improved the volume level on the video in Unit 1.7.

The video for Unit 1.9 has been repaired and is back on line.

Enrollment confirmation emails: We are aware that some people have not received them. We are working on the problem. In the meantime, all lectures can be viewed without logging on to the site.

Please note an error: the video in Unit 1.9 is out of order -- this will be fixed soon.

We now have a twitter account for the course: @ComplexExplorer

Be sure to follow us at twitter.com/ComplexExplorer

Unit 1 is up and running! Unit 2 will be coming soon. Watch this space for announcements.

Correction: In the video for Unit 1.7 (Introduction to NetLogo), the sub unit number for the homework is misstated. It should be 1.10.

Some features of this website are still under construction, but will be ready soon. These features include:

• User password changes
• Unenrolling
• Discussion Forum

We will be announcing the status of these in upcoming days.

We proudly announce the launch of our first online course, Introduction to Complexity! Check this page for up-to-date announcements on the course and the website.