2020-21 Academic Catalog

The development of techniques to study complex physical systems from a probabilistic and numerical standpoint, focused on cellular automata models. Subject material is applicable to all the sciences and mathematics. Some topics considered are random walks, percolation clusters, avalanches, traffic flow, the spread of forest fires and diseases, and a brief introduction to Bayesian statistics. No computer programming skills are assumed. Prerequisite: Physics 131, 143, or 144, or instructor permission