Course Links

   Lecture Slides (Updated Continuously)

 Systems Thinking Paper Rubric

 Knowledge Networks Paper Grading Rubric

 Course Calendar File

Hi!

Let's get to know each other.

Dr. John McLevey

• John
• Dr. McLevey
• Professor McLevey
• Mr. McLevey
• Sir

What do I do?

40/40/20: Research, Teaching, Service

Bronwyn McIlroy-Young

Teaching Assistant

Introduction

interdisciplinary systems thinking

leveraging diversity and social capital for good

getting to know the "big picture"

...

Learning Outcomes

Course Deliverables

 Systems Thinking Paper (Nov. 8, 30%)

 Knowledge Networks Paper (Dec. 5, 30%)

 10 Comprehension Quizzes (Ongoing, 30%)

 Engagement / Participation (Ongoing, 10%)

Systems Thinking Paper

You will co-author a paper that uses course readings to apply interdisciplinary systems-thinking to a contemporary problem. In addition to interpreting the problem from a systems perspective, you should compare possible interventions into the system and explain why some are more likely to succeed (i.e. make things better) than others.

Knowledge Networks Paper

You will co-author a "knowledge networks" paper on any disciplinary or interdisciplinary research area of your choosing. To write this paper, you will have to search a database like the Web of Science or PubMed and download meta-data on published journal articles. Then you will use (very simple) software such as VOSViewer or metaknowledge to interpret the high-level topics and network structure of your chosen research area. Then, you will select a small number of important papers (~6), explain why they are important, and identify their primary intellectual contributions.

Comprehension Quizzes

• Q1-3 Thinking, Understanding, Explaining (i.e. Watts)
• Q4 Collaboration & Openness (i.e. Heffernan)
• Q5-7 Complexity & Systems Thinking (i.e. Meadows)
• Q8 Databases & Literature Reviews
• Q9 Networked Knowledge: Surveying Content & Historical Bibliometrics
• Q10 Networked Knowledge: Network Analysis (citation, co-citation, co-author, keyword, etc.)

I will drop your lowest grade.

Participation / Engagement

• Participation in class activities and labs
• Attendance -- scan the unique    each class meeting

We will use slack

integ120.f2016.slack.com

XKCD, "Preferred Chat System."

The "Facebook Penalty"

Laptops may be used in the classroom on the honors system. If I see Facebook, email, an IM client other than #slack, a newspaper story, a blog, or any other content not related to the class, I will remove 1 point from your participation grade on the spot. No exceptions.

Books

• Duncan Watts Everything is Obvious Once You Know the Answer
• Margaret Heffernan Beyond Measure
• Donella Meadows Thinking in Systems

Computing

You will need a laptop for all classes marked as "computing" in the syllabus. You will need a laptop, a tablet, or a phone for all classes where a quiz is scheduled.

Software

VOSViewer and metaknowledge

Please complete Get to know people and help John make this a good class survey, which is active on LEARN until the coming Tuesday. This is to help us get to know one another, and to help me make this a better course.

Next Class

Watts Preface & Ch. 1

Thinking, Understanding, Explaining

Everything is Obvious

Duncan Watts

Today: "Preface" & "The Myth of Common Sense"

Initial Reactions

Why is it so hard to program a robot to ride a subway train?

(Photo Credit Michael Dolan) flickr

Commonsense is practical and can deal with everyday concrete situations on their own terms. It is essential to function in everyday life.

The Ultimatum Game

Common sense is "common" only to the extent that people share sufficiently similar social and culture experience. Collective tacit knowledge.

+ change over time, inconsistencies in our beliefs, etc.

Fragmented, inconsistent, and self-contradictory common sense doesn't pose a problem in everyday life because so many problems are small and independent of one another. It becomes a problem when we want to use common sense to solve problems that are not grounded in the immediate here and now of everyday life.

Examples?

"Bad things happen not because we forget to use our common sense, but rather because the incredible effectiveness of common sense in solving the problems of everyday life causes us to put more faith in it than it can bear."

Common sense physics?

Common sense _?

The Argument (So Far)

Common sense fails at understanding and explaining the world because

Next Class

Watts Ch. 2

Everything is Obvious

Duncan Watts

Today: "Thinking About Thinking"

Initial Reactions

At your table...

Key Concepts and Arguments

• Default settings
• "Homo Economicus" and rational choice theories
• Consciously available costs and benefits; rationalizing behavior

1/2 your table moves...

Key Concepts and Arguments

• Priming
• Anchoring

1/2 your table moves...

Key Concepts and Arguments

• Confirmation bias
• Motivated reasoning

1/2 your table moves...

Key Concepts and Arguments

• The frame problem / what is relevant?
• Mental simulation

1/2 your table moves...

Key Concepts and Arguments

• The trouble with designing incentive structures
• After the fact predictability

Take Home

Everything is Obvious

Duncan Watts

Today: "The Wisdom (and Madness) of Crowds"

"We claim to be saying that the Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world because it has attributes X, Y, and Z. But really what we're saying is that the Mona Lisa is famous because it is more like the Mona Lisa than anything else.

What is Circular Reasoning?

X succeeded because X had the properties of X.

"We want to believe that X succeed because it had just the right attributes, but the only attributes we know about are the attributes that X possess; thus we conclude that these attributes must have been responsible for X's success."

From circular reasoning to...

Emergence, or Micro / Macro Problem

How do you get from one level of reality to the next?

• from collections of atoms to molecules
• from collections of molecules to amino acids
• from collections of living cells to complex organs (e.g. the brain)
• from collections of organs to a sentient being

Many of the most interesting / important problems cross levels.

What is a "representative agent?"

"We do not speak of the genome as if it behaves like a single gene, not do we speak of brains as if they behave like individual neurons, or ecosystems like individual creatures. That would be ridiculous. When it comes to social phenomenon, however, we do speak of "social actors" like families, markets, political parties, demographic segments, and nation-states as if they act in more or less the same way as the individuals that comprise them."

What does it mean to say that crowds behave differently than the individuals that make them up?

How does Granovetter’s riot model illustrate the argument?

Granovetter’s Riot Model

• individual thresholds, distribution of thresholds across the crowd
• an identical crowd in a neighboring town, but where one person has a different individual threshold
• riots ensue in one town but not the other
• ...

Cumulative Advantage

Once X has become more popular than Y, it will tend to become more popular still.

Community, "Remedial Chaos Theory"

"If we were to imagine history being somehow 'rerun' many times, therefore, explanations in which intrinsic attributes were the only things that mattered would predict that the same outcome would pertain very time. By contrast, cumulative advantage would predict that even identical universes, starting out with the same set of people and objects and tastes, would nevertheless generate different cultural or marketplace winners."

Experimental Sociology (For Example)

"When individuals are influenced by what other people are doing, similar groups of people can end up behaving in very different ways." We shouldn't sidestep this problem by using the notion of a "representative agent."

Next Class

Watts "Special People"

Everything is Obvious

Duncan Watts

Today: "Special People"

What is the Small World Problem?

6 (?) Degrees of Separation from Justin Trudeau

The goal is to get a message to Trudeau, but you can only send the email to someone you know personally. Whoever receives your email can only forward it to someone they know personally.

What is a plausible path it might take, based on your reading about the small world problem. Remember, you can only control the first step.

What did Jane Jacobs get wrong?

• messages typically don't propagate on social networks by going up a hierarchy
• it's gets hard at the end of the chain, not the middle.

Even though there are "stars" in social networks, people are not airports! There are limits in the number of friends a person can have, and it doesn't come close to the number of connections in large airports.

In fact,

"when you want to get a message to a graduate student in Novosibirsk, Russia, you don't think about whom you know who has a lot of friends, or goes to a lot of parties ... You think about if you know any Russians. ... Maybe you know someone from Eastern Europe, or someone who has traveled to Eastern Europe, or has studied Russian, or who lives in a part of your city that is known for its Eastern European immigrants."

The Take Home:

Real social networks are connected in more complex and egalitarian ways than [Jane] Jacobs or [Stanley] Milgram ever imagined.

In spite of this evidence, we still think of special people who are disproportionately well connected.

The Influencers

What is the argument?

"Contagion -- the idea that information, and potentially influence -- can spread along network ties like an infectious disease -- is one of the most intriguing ideas in network science."

...

"Influencers may exist... but not the kind of influencers posited by the law of the few."

"The reason is simply that when influences is spread by some contagious process, the outcome depends far more on the overall structure of the network than on the properties of the individuals who trigger it. Just as forest fires require a conspiracy of wind, temperature, low humidity, and combustible fuel to rage out of control over large tracts of land, social epidemics require just the right conditions to be satisfied by the network of influence."

The most important condition is actually a critical mass of easily influenced people. Not the presence of a few highly influential people.

The Twitter study of social epidemics

Design? Take home?

Everything is Obvious

Duncan Watts

Today: "History (The Fickle Teacher)"

At your table

What is the main argument in this chapter?

How does it relate to the main arguments in "Thinking About Thinking," "The Wisdom (and Madness) of Crowds," and "Special People?"

• creeping determinism
• hindsight bias
• sampling bias
• the why vs. the what in historical explanations

Collaboration & Openness

Agenda

Quiz Update

I moved the quiz to Thursday because multiple people were confused about the content. The quiz will include questions from Ch. 4-5.

Systems Thinking Paper

A Second Option

Lessons from Watts, Heffernan, and Meadows for Knowledge Integration

Some Lessons from Everything is Obvious

Not Just a Laundry List of Problems...

Don't trust something because it seems obvious or appeals to common sense. Never rely on a single person's experience or opinion, especially your own. Try to catch yourself in motivated reasoning.

Learn as much as you possibly can from the people around you. Leverage local expertise. Look for solutions that are already working "on the ground."

Be aware of how you receive information, what kind of information you (do not) receive, and what you could do to improve the information flow. Always be thinking about sampling bias. Seek out non-confirming and negative views.

Adopt a data-driven and measurement-oriented mindset. Be willing to change when presented with good evidence. Update your beliefs and behaviors in the face of evidence. Measure and react.

Develop planning methods that respect the limits of prediction. Scenario analysis and optimizing for strategic flexibility, but more importantly react to the present.

Initial Connections

What connections do you see between Watts and the first part of Heffernan?

How does Heffernan define "social capital?"

Networks & Social Capital

Good Ideas, Integration, and the "Vision Advantage"

What is This? (Interactive Version)

nodes, edges, whole network, ego network, directed, undirected, isolates, dyads, triads, triadic closure, clustering and closure, tie quality (e.g. type, strength), tie quantity (weight), centrality (e.g. degree, betweenness, closeness, eigenvector), brokerage... and many more.

Looking a little less clustered this year...

Social capital is not an attribute of an individual (like human capital). It is embedded in a network. It's a resource that you have access to. It's who you know, not what you know.

Social Capital, Structural Holes

Ron Burt: Brokerage and Closure

What are some advantages of being embedded in tightly knit groups?

What are some advantages of bridging groups?

Opinion and behavior are more homogeneous within groups than across them, so people who are connected across groups are more familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving. Brokerage across structural holes provides a vision of opportunities otherwise unseen.

Some examples of brokerage at different levels of difficulty:

Writing

By a show of hands,

how many of you are "good writers?"

• "Good" writers, how do you know?
• "So-so" writers, how do you know?
• "Bad" writers, how do you know?

3 Minutes: How do you normally write?

3 Minutes: Why do you write this way?

3 Minutes: How did you learn to write?

3 Minutes: What could you do to make your writing better?

Now trade with the other people at your table.

"Fantasies of the Uninitiated"

Examples?

Myths About Writing

• I need a muse
• Good writers / smart people don’t write “shitty drafts”
• I don’t need an outline
• I only have 10 minutes, so I can’t write
• I already know how to write
• I don’t need to know how to write

Specious Barriers

• No time!
• More analysis / prep
• But I also need...
• Waiting for an idea

• Single bursts of inspired prose rarely good
• You almost never get to see the “shitty drafts” that come before a polished final result
• Most writers work on regular schedules
• Outlining and planning are critical
• You need at least three drafts
• You can write things in 10 minute blocks — but what?
• Good writers are made, not born

"Writing productively is about actions that you aren't doing but could easily do: making a schedule, setting clear goals, keeping track of your work, rewarding yourself, and building good habits." - Silvia

Writing Groups

What does Lamott mean by “bird by bird?”

Why are large projects immobilizing?

Why are small assignments useful?

Systems Thinking

Are You here?

What is a System

collections vs. systems

Why do we need systems thinking?

What is "systems thinking" anyway?

Basic Systems Concepts

• stocks
• flows
• feedback loops
  • reinforcing
  • balancing
  • dominance, shifting dominance

At your table

• browse news stories (The New York Times, Globe & Mail, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, etc.)
• select stories that could be about the behavior of a system
• draft a representation of that system using stock-and-flow diagram (note, you are coming up with hypotheses about systems)
• keep doing this...
• keep the diagrams accessible for next class

Are You here?

Today: getting deeper into stock and flow diagrams.

• finish the diagrams from last class
• go around the room, ask questions about other diagrams, help clarify thinking
  • Is this actually a system?
  • What are (or are not!) stocks in this system?
  • Do the system boundaries make sense?
  • Do the inflows and outflows make sense?
  • Do the reinforcing and balancing loops make sense?

Are You here?

Today

• common mistakes
  • what is a stock?
  • differentiating between stocks, inflows, and outflows
• new concepts
  • resilience, hierarchy, self-organization, mental models
• the systems thinking paper
  • clarifying goals and expectations
  • coming up with initial ideas for paper
  • tomorrow: starting to form groups and develop topics

Common Mistakes

• the stock that you are focusing on have history.
• the inflows and outflows are the same "thing" as the stock. they are the stock increasing or decreasing over time.
• the clouds mark the artificial boundaries of the system. they represent the fact that everything comes from somewhere.
• reinforcing loops cause the stock to increase, balancing loops cause the stock to decrease.

New Concept

Resilience

A systems ability to survive and persist in a variable environment. E.g. though redundant feedback loops.

Meta-Resilience

Feedback loops that can restore or rebuild feedback loops. learn, create, design, evolve.

Examples

the human body, populations, ecosystems

static stability is not resilience.

resilience can be very hard to see unless you exceed its limits

Examples?

New Concept

Self-Organization

the capacity to make the system structure more complex: lean, diversify, evolve.

simple organizing rules can lead to complex self-organizing systems.

New Concept

Hierarchy

Systems are nested. Higher level systems coordinate the subsystems. this increases resilience and reduces the amount of information that any part of the system has to keep track of. When systems break down, they often split along subsystem boundaries.

Mental Models

Why Systems Surprise Us

Everything we think we know about the world is a model, some of which are better than others. Systems models are especially good models, but they are still imperfect.

"Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful."Statistician George Box

Mental Models

... Connections to Watts ...

• beguiling events
• linear minds in a non-linear world
• non-existent boundaries
• layers of limits
• ubiquitous delays
• bounded rationality

The Systems Thinking Paper

Goals and Expectations

Your papers should draw on material from Watts, Heffernan, and Meadows, but not necessarily equally.

• Learn how to pick and develop a paper topic
• Demonstrate and apply systems thinking
• Emphasize consequences of a systems perspective (e.g. potential interventions into a system)
• Include stock and flow diagrams
• Learn how to effectively collaborate on a small project

I am developing a grading rubric with Bronwyn and Samantha.

In Dyads or Triads...

Start thinking of as many potentially interesting paper ideas as possible. Record them and have them available for next class.

NOTE

The rest of the content from Thinking in Systems was covered in in-class activities.

Databases & Literature Reviews

What is a "literature review?"Why are you conducting / writing one?

Why?

• To situate your work in an intellectual context
• To identify dominant theories / explanations / concepts
• To assess the state of our knowledge about x
• Evidence-based policy
• ...

Common Mistakes

"Literature Review" is a catch all for many different things.

• May or may not include a comprehensive search
• May or may not include explicit quality assessments
• May cover different types of areas, issues, problems, questions
• May be qualitative or quantitative
• May be theory-driven, problem-driven, case-driven
• May be oriented towards research, policy, practice, etc.
• Disciplinary differences in goals, conventions, etc.

Just some of the many types of literature reviews: Duke Medical Library and Archives.

Reviewing the literature -- towards any end -- is especially complicated when relevant work is conducted in different disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts.

As KI students, you will need to develop very strong reviewing skills.

Let's assume that your approach is going to be broadly "systematic."

The General Process

Search / Consult

Web of Science, PubMed, JSTOR, Scopus, Google Scholar, Library Databases, etc.

• make a list of all the "areas" that might be relevant
• search article databases effectively
• find someone who knows what they are talking about
• befriend a reference librarian
• follow citation chains
• keep a log of all your searches
• look for specialist academic journals
• look through the Annual Review Series
• find disciplinary / interdisciplinary handbooks

Evaluate / Quickly Assess

Learn how to read books and articles... (yes...)

• read with purpose
• scan and scope before you read
• identify the logic of the article
• read differentially
• annotate
• focus on the confusing parts
• write notes immediately
• reflect on the argument
• re-read

Analyze / Synthesize / Integrate

• search for patterns, group studies together
• identify theories and concepts
• identify competing theories
• look for changes in explanations / understanding over time
• develop and critically assess your own narrative / understanding of the problem

Write / Present

• must be clearly focused
• should have subheadings, e.g. "Theory $X$, Theory $Y$, The Case"
• will typically not include everything you read
• should guide the audience to a particular conclusion, e.g. "this is very important research!"

Networked Knowledge

Each Table!

Unzip that folder of articles...You have 20 minutes to learn as much about them as you can.

GO!

Now, I want you to create piles / clusters of similar articles. You can cluster them however you want. You can create as many clusters as you think is appropriate.

How did you cluster them? Why?What did you learn?

There is another way!metadata

Web of Science

What is metaknowledge?

$x$ of science, science and technology studies (STS),scientometrics / informetrics / bibliometrics, etc.

Lots of intellectual diversity!

disciplinary background? non-researcher audience? methods? goal? "computational?" ...

Networks!

Let's start with a refresher.

From the first part of class.See slide 5.15

From the second part of class. Recall: brokerage, knowledge, ideas, behavior, etc.

UC San Diego "Map of Science" Data

Metaknowledge Research

one-mode social networks (e.g. co-authorship)one-mode content networks (e.g. keyword co-occurrence)two-mode social and / or content networks

Many different goals...

One-Mode Social Networks

Almost always collaboration networks.

co-authorshipco-investigatormentorshipcommunication...

What do you think a co-authorship network with data from these two papers would look like?

Assign an edge between two researchers if they ___ together.

Usually the data should be stored as an edge list and a node attribute file, but there are other ways too.

Giant component from Canadian social science co-authorship network, 2005-2015.

One-Mode Content Networks

citation and co-citationdocument level, author level, journal level

What do you think citation and co-citation networks would be constructed at the document, author, and journal levels?

Co-citation network of 2015 articles published in Science and Nature.

Two-Mode Networks

The nodes in the network have two different classes. Links are between but not within classes.

e.g. article-keyword networks

article-keyword network for articles in Scientometrics and Social Studies of Science from 2005-2015.

Next class: historical bibliometrics and installing software!

Conclusions & Debriefing

To come.