Introduction to the Modeling and Analysis of Complex Systems

xiiThis textbook was made possible, thanks to the help and support of a number ofpeople. I would like to first express my sincere gratitude to Ken McLeod, the formerChair of the Department of Bioengineering at Binghamton University, who encouragedme to write this textbook. The initial brainstorming discussions I had with him helped metremendously in shaping the basic topics and structure of this book. After all, it was Kenwho hired me at Binghamton, so I owe him a lot anyway. Thank you Ken.My thanks also go to Yaneer Bar-Yam, the President of the New England ComplexSystems Institute (NECSI), where I did my postdoctoral studies (alas, way more than adecade ago—time flies). I was professionally introduced to the vast field of complex systemsby him, and the various research projects I worked on under his guidance helpedme learn many of the materials discussed in this book. He also gave me the opportunityto teach complex systems modeling at the NECSI Summer/Winter Schools. This ongoingteaching experience has helped me a lot in the development of the instructional materialsincluded in this textbook. I would also like to thank my former PhD advisor, Yoshio Oyanagi,former Professor at the University of Tokyo. His ways of valuing both scientific rigorand intellectual freedom and creativity influenced me greatly, which are still flowing in myblood.This textbook uses PyCX, a simple Python-based complex systems simulation framework.Its GUI was developed by Chun Wong, a former undergraduate student at BinghamtonUniversity and now an MBA student at the University of Maryland, and PrzemysławSzufel and Bogumił Kamiński, professors at the Warsaw School of Economics, to whom Iowe greatly. If you find PyCX’s GUI useful, you should be grateful to them, not me. Pleasesend them a thank you note.I thank Cyril Oberlander, Kate Pitcher, Allison Brown, and all others who have madethis wonderful OpenSUNY textbook program possible. Having this book with open accessto everyone in the world is one of the main reasons why I decided to write it in the firstplace. Moreover, I greatly appreciate the two external reviewers, Kris Green, at St. JohnFisher College, and Siddharth G. Chatterjee, at SUNY College of Environmental Scienceand Forestry, whose detailed feedback was essential in improving the quality and accuracyof the contents of this book. In particular, Kris Green’s very thorough, constructive,extremely helpful comments have helped bring the scientific contents of this textbook upto a whole new level. I truly appreciate his valuable feedback. I also thank Sharon Ryanfor her very careful copy editing for the final version of the manuscript, which greatly improvedthe quality of the text.My thanks are also due to my fellow faculty members and graduate students at theCenter for Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems (CoCo) at Binghamton University,including Shelley Dionne, Fran Yammarino, Andreas Pape, Ken Kurtz, Dave Schaffer, Yu