Welcome to CS300b - Agent Modeling

AI with complex networks

CS 300b is a Topics in Computer Science course focused on Agent Modeling. This course will guide you through the reflections on what it means to create models of real life and how to implement them in a computer. We will be going from the basics to some fundamental models inspired by many different areas (i.e. ecology, sociology, economics, etc.) and lead the students through the process of conceiving their first model.

This a permanently in construction website, so please let us know if you find any information missing or had some bad experience with the links and interface throughout the semester.

Here you will find all information needed to do well during the course.

Student Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:

  • Think critically about what it means to build real-life models.
  • Understand and design epidemic models.
  • Understand and design opinion dynamics models.
  • Understand and design cooperation models.
  • Code agent-based models using Netlogo and run experiments to evaluate their outcomes.

Course Organization

The course is organized around these components:

  1. The lectures that will introduce modeling topics at the conceptual level;
  2. The homeworks in which students will (individually) practice programming in Netlogo; and
  3. The projects in which students will (in pairs) develop their own models.

Each week’s lectures, homeworks and projects will cover the same concepts, but will do so in different ways.

The first 2 weeks will be dedicated to learning Netlogo and the concept of agent modeling. After that, we will begin designing and implementing our own models.

Acknowledgements

This website is built with Quarto, the lovely icons by icons8. The original code used to build this website can be found at DS Box. We are very grateful for their work!