Developing computational mathematics provision in undergraduate mathematics degrees

Over the last ten years we have comprehensively embedded computational mathematics, and in doing so programming, into the undergraduate mathematics degree programmes at the University of Leeds. This case study discusses some of the practical, organisational and pedagogical issues we encountered, and how we addressed them

Tipping Points in 1-dimensional Schelling Models with Switching Agents

Schelling’s spacial proximity model was an early agent-based model, illustrating how ethnic segregation can emerge, unwanted, from the actions of citizens acting according to individual local preferences. Here a 1-dimensional unperturbed variant is studied under switching agent dynamics, interpretable as being open in that agents may enter and exit the model. Following the authors’ work (Barmpalias et al., FOCS, 2014) and that of Brandt et al. (Proceedings of the 44th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2012), 2012), rigorous asymptotic results are established. The dynamic allows either type to take over almost everywhere. Tipping points are identified between the regions of takeover and staticity. In a generalization of the models considered in [1] and [3], the model’s parameters comprise the initial proportions of the two types, along with independent values of the tolerance for each type. This model comprises a 1-dimensional spin-1 model with spin dependent external field, as well as providing an example of cascading behaviour within a network

Digital morphogenesis via Schelling segregation

Schelling's model of segregation looks to explain the way in which particles or agents of two types may come to arrange themselves spatially into configurations consisting of large homogeneous clusters, i.e. connected regions consisting of only one type. As one of the earliest agent based models studied by economists and perhaps the most famous model of self-organising behaviour, it also has direct links to areas at the interface between computer science and statistical mechanics, such as the Ising model and the study of contagion and cascading phenomena in networks. While the model has been extensively studied it has largely resisted rigorous analysis, prior results from the literature generally pertaining to variants of the model which are tweaked so as to be amenable to standard techniques from statistical mechanics or stochastic evolutionary game theory. In Brandt et al (2012 Proc. 44th Annual ACM Symp. on Theory of Computing) provided the first rigorous analysis of the unperturbed model, for a specific set of input parameters. Here we provide a rigorous analysis of the model's behaviour much more generally and establish some surprising forms of threshold behaviour, notably the existence of situations where an increased level of intolerance for neighbouring agents of opposite type leads almost certainly to decreased segregation

Dimension and measure in finite first order structures

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