Hello and welcome back!
So today we are going to talk a bit about the organization of the course and how the course is set up.
As you can see before you the course structure is set up into nine different units.
Each of these corresponds to roughly about a week of content, except for the first unit which should take you about roughly two weeks to cover.
These additional units will show up on a weekly basis
and each one will be composed of anywhere between 5 and 7 subunits.
These subunits were corresponding roughly to about one days worth of activities.
Those subunits will contain a few video lectures, maybe a quiz, maybe some exercises, tryouts and things like that.
As you can see from the course structure guide,
we will be starting kind of with the basic concepts:
What is an agent-based model? Why should you use it?
What are some simple models out there that you can create very easily?
How do you extend models other people have created?
From there we will be moving to a second section where we will start to talk about how to build a full model from the grounds up.
We will also talk about the components and the architecture of a model and how to analyze the results.
After that we will get into some more advanced topics like
how to verify your model, make sure it corresponds well to the conceptual model;
and how to validate your model to show that it corresponds well to the real world.
And also have you replicate models you have seen other people create.
Then talk about the applications of agent-based modeling and places where they have been applied in the past, as where agent-based modeling comes from.
And finally we will end with some advanced techniques.
During this entire time you will, of course, be led through the course by me, your lead instructor.
But you will also be interacting with Anamaria Berea who is my assistant instructor in this class and who has worked with me in the past as postdoctoral research fellow.
We will be trying to help you out as much as possible, answering questions you may have and try to facilitate the class wherever we can make it easier to move along.
If you want to contact us there are a number of different ways: You can email us at abm@complexityexplorer.org. There is also a twitter if you prefer to use that medium. The course twitter handle is @intro2abm and my personal twitter handle is @billrand.
I am also planning to try and host a weekly google hangout on Tuesday of every week from 11-12 EST.
That particular time slot is chosen trying to get people from both the west coast as well as the east coast of the United States and also try and catch people who might be wrapping up their day in Europe as well.
Links to that hangout will be posted. Due to travel and things like that it may not be possible to host it every single week, but I will do my best to make sure I am there in those times.
And you can always email us in the other time as well.
So, that is the basic outline and the basic way to interact with us.
Feel free to shoot us an email any time you have any questions.
And we will go from there.