Just Finished Some Summer School Apps...

I just finalized my application for the Sante Fe Summer School on Complex Systems, and my application for a summer internship at the World Bank...this still leaves my applications for internships at the IMF and the Federal Reserve to finish.  If I fail to get accepted to the Sante Fe Summer School, I am going to apply to the Sante Fe Program on Computational Social Sciences as well...

Anyone else have ideas for summer internships?

Posting will be eratic this week...

I am working on my presentation for the upcoming workshop in Edinburgh on Network Fragility and as such posting will be highly limited this week.

The Vaults and Garden Cafe...

Coming at you, post-"Community Detection in Multi-Slice Networks," from the Vaults and Garden Cafe in Oxford...

Dr. Mason Porter gave a very nice and thorough seminar on applications of his method of detecting communities in multi-slice networks.  Applications ranged from financial networks to actual human brains (and everything in between).  The technique itself is deceptively simply:  one simply seeks the community partition that optimizes a well-known network quantity called modularity (where modularity is measured in terms of departure from some chosen null model).  However, actually implementing the technique can be extremely challenging.

I am interested in applying these techniques to international trade (which to Dr. Porter's knowledge has not yet been attempted).  To start, what I need is to find an appropriate null model for international trade networks.  I will then find a community partition that maximizes modularity relative to what one would expect given my null model.  Typically, null models are random network models...so which random network model is most descriptive on the international trade network?  What about Kronecker graphs?

The White Horse Pub...

I almost forgot...I had an excellent meal last night in the White Horse pub near Balliol College.  The pub itself was founded in 1591!  I had planned to go search out a good curry on Cowley St., but became distracted by a hand-scrawled chalkboard offering "Fresh Game Pie and Local Ale." 

So instead of a curry dinner...I had a rabbit, venison, and boar pie with potatoes.  I spent the remainder of my evening at the White Horse by the fire with two pints of a local ale called "The Village Idiot" and a newly purchased book: Marx: A Very Short Introduction...

Complexity Catastrophes...

On the train down to Oxford I read through almost all of the proceedings from the original Sante Fe Conference on economics as a complex system.  I found the following chapters to be particularly useful for economists:

1. The Evolution of Economic Webs, Stuart Kaufman
2. Persistent Oscillations and Chaos in Economic Models, Michele Boldrin
3. Self-Reinforcing Mechanisms in Economics, W. Brian Arthur
4. Computation and Multiplicity of Economic Equilibria, Timothy J. Kehoe
5. Rational Expectations, Game Theory and Inflationary Inertia, Mario Henrique Simonsen
6. The Global Economy as an Adaptive Process, John H. Holland

Of the above chapters, Kaufman's on the evolution of economic webs is by far the most thought-provoking.  I am particularly fond of his ideas on complexity catastrophes, as they parallel some of my own ideas on the dangers posed by overly dense connectivity in financial networks. 

Afternoon in Oxford...

After spending most of the early morning walking around Oxford trying to find a coffee shop that doesn't force you to pair for wifi service, I have now settled down to work on my international trade networks presentation in the Cafe Nero above the original Blackwell's bookstore...apparently the Blackwell's is close enough to Trinity College that I can access its eduroam wifi.

On a side note, I must say that  I am underwhelmed by the coffee shops that I have encountered in Oxford so far (with the exception of Green's Cafe)...Edinburgh wins easily using the coffee shop metric...

Are there any Oxford alums that are reading my blog? If so, suggestion regarding food, coffee, and pubs would be much appreciated...tonight I am going to go searching for a good curry over on Cowley St.

Edinburgh at Dusk...

Took this photo from the top of Arthur's Seat around 4:30 pm...

 

I am heading south to Oxford University tomorrow to attend a seminar on the evolution of community structure in multi-slice networks at CABDyN.

I have never been to England before (I do not count layovers at Heathrow), and I am excited about this first (of hopefully many) visits to Oxford University.