What is Complexity and How Do You Measure It?

In this workshop, experts from a diverse range of disciplines will share their specialised datasets and their own theoretical approaches to measuring complexity. The goal is to seek through dialogue and comparative analysis, general principles operating in complex systems.

Participants will collect their own example datasets and complexity metrics (algorithms, code, or software applications) in an online resource called the Atlas of Complexity enabling systematic comparison of one approach with another (i.e., I will run my metric on your data). The Atlas of Complexity will make it easier to locate examples of complexity, promote benchmarking and the adoption of standards in complexity science and ensure reproducibility of findings.

Over the course of the week, participants will formulate a high-profile review paper on complexity (explicitly asking what is complexity and how do you measure it?). The review paper will draw on the diverse concrete examples deposited in the Atlas of Complexity.   

Participants will have expertise covering these disciplines:

- Pure Math & Formal Theory of Computation

- Complexity Science

- Physics of Critical Phenomena

- Early Warning Signals of Critical Transitions

- Econophyics

- Social Networks

- Complexity in Legal Structures

- Data Science (Big Data Analytics)

- Complexity in Art

- Artificial Intelligence & Robots

- Biology