Sorry if I appeared flip, Owen. The book is a short one of about 100 pages / 16 short chapters adapted from Joe's 1993 lectures in France. It deals more with computational complexity or information-based complexity which is loosely related to our general use of the term Complexity.
I would be up for a reading group around the book that tried to get a better understanding of the relationship of the two worlds. If we get sufficiently far, perhaps Joe could give a lecture and disabuse of any progress we think we've made :-) As a flip aside, I think there is a might be a way to apply computational complexity to define/measure boundary conditions in agent-based models. In the case of the ant foraging abm, I think of the roles of the nests and food sources as injecting information into the system and are a the potential source of order. The rate at which they inject these bits of information may be a measure of how 'far-from-equilibrium' the system is. Ie, every time step, the nest and food patches are testing if any ants are at their location and flipping their behavioral bit between food-seeking to nest-seeking. I'm wondering if you can tie the computational complexity of that action and the gradient following behavior of the ants to the macroscopic order you see in the ant path creation. Just wild-hair speculation... -S > -----Original Message----- > From: Owen Densmore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 10:10 AM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Complexity and Information - Cambridge > University Press > > DOH! Sorry Pamela, I entirely missed the fact that J. F. Traub was > *your* J. F. Traub! I just bought the book, btw. > > For the rest of FRIAM, here's Joe's web site: > http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~traub/ > > -- Owen > > Owen Densmore http://backspaces.net > > > On Aug 16, 2006, at 8:27 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote: > > > Owen, > > > >> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been > discussed > >> before. > > > > We just discussed this last week. It's on my bookshelf. Ask > Pamela if > > she's interviewed the guy. :-) > > > > -S > > > >> -----Original Message----- > >> From: Owen Densmore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >> Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 8:19 AM > >> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Friam > >> Subject: [FRIAM] Complexity and Information - Cambridge University > >> Press > >> > >> Has anyone read this? > >> http://tinyurl.com/pbxm9 > >> or > >> http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp? > >> isbn=0521485061 > >> > >> Looks quite interesting and I was surprised it hasn't been > discussed > >> before. > >> > >> -- Owen > >> > >> Owen Densmore http://backspaces.net > >> > >> > >> > >> ============================================================ > >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at > >> cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, > unsubscribe, maps at > >> http://www.friam.org > >> > >> > > > > > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays > 9a-11:30 at cafe > > at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at > > http://www.friam.org > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
