COMP6044   Just another ECS Blogs weblog

Now I’m doing Cryptography as a discipline, which has got elements of both mathematics and computing science. The main source for this particular post is from: “A Handbook of Applied Cryptography” by A. Menzes, P. van Oorschot and S. Vanstone. It will probably continue to be a fairly major source throughout the project because it’s a recommended and comprehensive text and best of all is free at http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/ which is nice.  Of course, the reference between cryptography and IP/copyright theft is that it is necessary to have a means of protecting media.  Otherwise, how on earth are films/records going to be able to continue charging extortionate prices..?

Cryptography and Cryptanalysis

Cryptography is the study of mathematical techniques related to aspects of information security such as confidentiality, data integrity, entity authentication, and data origin authentication
Cryptanalysis is the study of mathematical techniques for attempting to defeat cryptographic techniques, and, more generally, information security services

Cryptography seeks to build a framework around the following four goals:

• confidentiality
• data integrity
• authentication
• non-repudiation. (p4)

A cryptographic primitive is a tool which is used to provide information security such as encryption schemes, hash functions, and digital signatures. A primitive is evaluated according to criteria such as:

1. Level of security
2. Functionality
3. Methods of Operation
4. Performance
5. Ease of Implementation

Functions

One-way functions are essential for public key cryptography. The definition from the book is:
A function f from a set X to a set Y is called a one-way function if f(x) is “easy” to compute for all elements x E X but for essentially all elements of the y E Im(f) it is computationally infeasible to find any x E X such that f(x) = y.

More specifically, a trapdoor one-way function is a one way function but with additional information (trapdoor information) it becomes feasible to find for any given y E Im(f), an x E X such that f(x) = y.
It has not rigorously been established whether any one way functions exist (according to the definition above)

How Encryption Works

Two parties Alice and Bob secretly exchange a key pair. Alice encrypts the message and then sends the encrypted message to Bob who can then decrypt the message. The key must be sent along a secure channel, but an adversary can see the encrypted message which is later sent.
An encryption scheme is breakable if a third party, without prior knowledge of the key pair can systematically recover plaintext from corresponding ciphertext within some appropriate time frame

See Kerckhoffs’ desiderata (p14) for the desirability of cipher systems (from 1883 but remain relevant today mostly)

Symmetric-key Encryption

Symmetric-key encryption has the difficulty of securely sending the keys between the parties. The encryption and decryption transformations must be kept secret because the decryption transformation can be deduced from the encryption transformation.

Public-key Encryption

Introduced in the paper “New Directions in Cryptography” (1976) Diffie & Hellman. Definition from the book:
The encryption method is said to be a public-key encryption scheme if for each associated encryption/decryption pair (e,d), one key e (the public key) is made publicly available, while the other d(the private key) is kept secret. For the scheme to be secure it must be computationally infeasible to compute d from e

There are still issues about the transmission of the public key, because an adversary can defeat the system without breaking it – see p28. This requires the use of digital signatures another purpose for which cryptography can be used.

Well for anyone who’s still reading this a few other issues that aren’t from “the book” (well at least that I’ve read yet anyway) are:

• People are stupid, that’s the way to get to an encryption method is attack the protocols etc.
• Means of attacking an encryption system(people/protocols, brute force)
• Issues with data permanence. With Moore’s law still going strong (is it?) how long can data be securely kept? DES was secure enough in its day, but now a message can be encrypted in less than a day
• I also plan to have a look at how some popular encryption schemes work, and at methods to break them

This week I have been continuing to read Carlson et al (2007)focusing on scientific methods used in psychology. I have also been reading ‘Psychology’ by Martin, Carlson and Buskist (2006) to gain an understanding of evolution, genetics, and behaviour.

The Scientific Method in Psychology
Psychologists carry out three main types of scientific research: Naturalistic or Clinical Observation, correlational studies and experiments. The latter makes things happen and allows us to observe the results.’ This allows the person carrying out the experiment to identify the relationship between cause and effect. The researcher must first understand the problem they are trying to solve and come up with a hypothesis based on information gathered through naturalistic observations and previous research/experiments. When performing an experiment Carlson et al (2007) explains how independent variables are manipulated and dependant variables measured/observed.

Psychology – Evolution, genetics, and behaviour

Biological Evolution
A key, influential figure in the theory of psychology is Charles Darwin. Following his voyage on the Beagle and his thinking and research of artificial selection, he argued that organisms adapt to their environment by biological means. Darwin was not the first person to suggest a theory of evolution but he was the first to provide evidence. He believed that ‘selection was the foundation of mans success in making useful races of animals and plants’ (Darwin, 1887). However, Darwin was unable to work out how selection could be applied to organisms living in nature. It was after his reading of Malthus’s population that Darwin suggested that ‘selection’ would result in the production of new species – this was the idea of natural selection – in any population some members of a species will produce more offspring then other members. Some animals are likely to live longer and produce more offspring if they have characteristics that help them to survive or easily adjust to alterations to the environment. There are two key ideas central to Darwin’s theory of evolution:

Adaptation – the capability of a species to adapt to changes in the environment
Natural Selection – the process where differences in some species will be transferred from one generation to the next.

Darwin’s theory has four fundamental premises:
1. Plant and animal communities change over a period of time with some becoming extinct and other new forms emerging
2. The evolutionary process is steady and continuous with new species emerging slow and steadily.
3. Organisms descend from an original and common ancestor.
4. Natural selection also aims to maintain a status quo under constant environmental conditions and not just cause alterations in populations during changing environmental conditions.

There are two aspects of natural selection that determine whether an animal will be successful in reproducing:

Variation – this includes differences in physical characteristics (i.e. size, strength) and behavioural characteristics (i.e. intelligence, sociability) between members of a species. These differences are as a result of genotypes(genetic differences) and phenotypes (produced as a result of the interaction of its genotype with the environment).

Competition – because individuals of the same species share the same environment competition for food, habitats, and mates is to be expected. For example if a bird finds a mate then that is one less mate for other birds.
So basically, it can be said that natural selection works because members of different species have different phenotypes and these are caused by different genotypes, which some successful members will pass (their genes) to the next generation. Therefore competition for resources such as food will only allow the best adapted phenotypes to survive, and hence evolutionary change.

Natural Selection and Human Evolution
Ok so from this I have gained an understanding that there are some ‘pieces of the puzzle’ that we may never be able to find, and not all our questions on the evolution of humans will be answered. Natural selection has favoured two important human characteristics:

Bipedalism – the ability to walk upright on two feet – evolved over 4million years ago and meant ancestors had more mobility and meant the hands were free for grabbing, holding and throwing objects.

Encephalisation – an increase in brain size
The combination of these two characteristics led to improvements in tool making, food gathering and hunting. It further allowed humans to make use of new environments and develop well organised communities. These advances helped humans live longer. This also meant that because people were living longer older members of communities shared their knowledge to younger members through language. It meant others could be warned of potential danger, but also used to communicate a good location for hunting.
Most importantly, it reinforced the basis upon which all human cultures are built. Cultural evolution –i.e. changes in cultures as a result of changes in the environment over a period of time, has only be made possible because humans have been genetically gifted with a capacity for learning and language.

Heredity and Genetics
Genetics – the study of ‘the structure and function of genes in the way in which genes are passed from one generation to the next.’ This also includes how genetic make up influences physical and behavioural characteristics. Also related is Heredity – ‘traits and tendencies inherited from a person’s parents and other biological ancestors.’ Basic principles of genetics:
Genes – parts of genetic material known as DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Our development and behaviour is only influenced through protein synthesis. Genes can be found in chromosomes which contain DNA and can be found in all cells. Every set of chromosomes contains a different combination of genes. As humans we inherit 23 individual chromosomes from our parents (i.e. thousands of genes) – so 23 pairs (46 in total). So our genetic blueprint is as a result of a combination of genetic instructions that our parents inherited from their parents previously.

Genetic diversity
Only identical twins are considered to be genetically identical. When changes in an environment occur, genetically diverse species have more of a chance of surviving and adapting to the new environment because some members of a species may have genes that will enable this survival.

The expression of a gene is affected by a person’s sex, interactions with other genes, and the conditions of the environment in which the individual lives. Mutation or chromosomal aberrations cause changes in genetic material.

Mutations – accidental changes in the DNA code, can have harmful effects or can result in characteristics that can benefit certain environments, they happen spontaneously or as a consequence of human related factors e.g. radiation.
E.g. Haemophilia – gene arose with Queen Victoria (1819-1901), more likely to bleed even from small, minor injuries.

Chromosomal aberration – alterations in the total number of chromosomes or in parts of chromosomesE.g. Down’s syndrome –have different physical characteristics such as being shorter, having a rounder face, broader skulls, and demonstrate impaired physical, psychomotor and cognitive development.

Behaviour genetics
Is the study of the effects of genetic influences on behaviour (heritability). It helps to provide reasoning for why people differ. Psychologists explore the relationship between genes and behaviour in human beings using artificial selection studies of identical twins, animals, and adoption.

Last week I investigated how sociology used historical analysis, cross cultural research, individual case studies and the examination of changing social trends. This week I return to economics, with an examination of the nature of supply, and elasticity in a market. These theories are central to which goods get to a market, and the price at which they retail.

                Supply is the amount of any good or service that a company is willing to produce for a set price. Building on this the law of supply states that all other things remaining equal, the higher the price of a good the greater amount which is supplied. Companies cannot produce every product demanded by the market due to supply constraints and the need to remain profitable. As such it’s imperative that companies calculate the required supply, and not to flood a market. The main factors affecting the supply of a good in a market are known as the factors of production, first among these is price, if a good is expensive to produce, less are made, furthermore if the price of producing a good increases, due to external factors, for example the price of producing a plastic toy will go up if oil prices rise, as such less toys will be produced. Competition and complimentary goods also affect the supply of any given goods, in highly competitive markets its prudent to supply a smaller number, if there are a large number of complimentary goods, supply goes up. The expected future price of a good also effects supply, if a good is predicted to rise in the coming months, the supply available now will be reduced to save supplies for later use, ensuring later profitability. Conversely if the price of a good is expected to fall, it is good to increase current supply as such to reduce the impact of the reduced price. The number of suppliers in any given market also governs the total available supply. The more producers there are the more that it is possible to produce and supply to the consumer. The final factor that economists consider affecting supply, is technology, this is a catch all term to describe pretty much any other factor, and can be concerned with actual technological issuess, for example, a company invests in a new machine which allows them to produce and supply twice of much of any product for the same price as before, supply will increase. Technology however could also include factors such as a natural disaster, which may reduce the availability of raw materials and hence reduce supply.

                Supply is based on planed sales of a product. Based on the relationship between the nature of demand (See blog 2) and its interaction with supply, all sales of any given product eventually reach an equilibrium, where the quantity of a good demanded equals the quantity of a good supplied. How much a product is demanded affects the overall selling price as individuals are willing to spend more money on the product, if a product is rare, for example a mint 50 year old comic, then demand goes up relative to the quantity available, and hence price goes up. A surplus or excess of any product will reduce the relative value of any product, and reduce price. Based on this relationship it  is important that businesses manage the available supply and demands of a product to ensure god returns. Advertising helps increase demand for a product, reduced supply increases price, as such if consumers value a product demand goes up, and if this available in limited quantity, price goes up. It is to be noted that sellers commonly reduce price to a point lower than the idea market cost to gain increased market share, this tactic is common among supermarkets, especially in the run up to large events such as Christmas.

                With markets always moving to achieve equilibrium, large scale shifts in supply or demand can lead to uncertainties in a market. The price elasticity of demand give a measure of how responsive the market is to price changes, some products are inelastic, such as alcohol and petrol, both products have consistently increased in price, yet demand has remained unchanged. Other products however are very elastic and are affected by minor shifts in price, for example if a large box of Dazz is sold at £18, demand and supply will settle at this price, if a similar box of Bold enters the market at £10 the demand for Dazz drops substantially. This occurs because Bold is a close substitute for Dazz and hence acts to increase the elasticity of the market. The web has increased the elasticity of many products, as it has allowed a greater awareness of many products substitutes, hence the relative price falls.

                Similar elasticity exists for supply, as the cost of producing any products may vary as a function of the quantity demanded. if the cost per unit of producing an item does not vary based on the quantity produced, its supply can be considered inelastic, if there is a price point that any quantity of units can be produced then the supply can be considered elastic.

                 So why do we care about supply? The web has turned most of the globe into one big market place, hence the supply of the majority of items has increased. This means that the relative price of products have fallen, allowing consumers increased power in the market. Consumers have freedom and power, potentially reducing the relative importance of traditional economic theory.  

Until next time!

Following this week’s session on the blogs, I think I probably need to focus more on the discipline, rather than the issue whilst summarising my reading. I have continued reading through Small Places, Large Issues to help further my understanding of Anthropology, although the chapters I am covering now are all relevant to my chosen issue of Identity.

The book describes a slight change in Anthropological research in recent times, with the majority of material collected in the past coming from in-depth ethnographical studies of local communities. However it has become common now that additional sources other than fieldwork now contribute to the research, including historical sources and the media. The main focus of the study remains on the “interrelationships between different aspects of social and symbolic systems through participant observation”, although there has been a movement away from the traditional focus on isolated villages in remote parts of the world. Local communities are said to have traditionally been the focus of studies due to them being “methodologically manageable units”, where participant observation is easy, and the anthropologist can become familiar with each individual and their relationships with each other. However, there is an increase in focus on larger social systems with unclear boundaries, but the techniques and theories used to study these are generally similar, supplemented by more methods other than participant observation.

My last post covered a section of the book focusing on people as individuals and their statuses and roles within particular contexts. My latest reading has covered the social life from the perspective of society. Socialisation – “the process whereby one becomes a fully competent member of society” is something that seems interesting, with many anthropological studies showing that child-raising is linked to the shaping of behaviour and thoughts in a society’s members. The concept of Anomie (Durkheim) where one becomes alienated by an inability to match the values of society has been shown to exist in many societies, even where the society is tightly integrated. Anthropological studies can also examine the traditions associated with how one’s identity changes over time, with members of a society transitioning from one stage of their life to the next through a rite of passage. The book suggest that the question of whether we are ‘the same person’ throughout our lives is a philosophical issue, with anthropology seeming to suggest that this is not so. It will be interesting to see the psychological perspective on this issue.

This week I decided to increase my understanding of CyberWarfare in general. I have read several articles and reports;  and, I have watched several videos on this issue from my IGOOGLE News feed.

Things that I found interesting: Adam Segal is a Senior Fellow on the council of foreign relations. He talks about attacks on other people’s infrastructure, websites, espionage, copyrights and so forth. As society we are mainly concerned with identity theft and someone taking our credit cards, however, in some places the individuals that get hold of this information are often used by the state for political reasons.  For example, attacks on Estonia. Some had relations to the Russian mafia. Similarly, attacks by Google were considered routine by security experts. It has been reported that China has been continuously trying to hack into GMAIL accounts of human rights activists.

 It raises the notion as to how much the Chinese government has gained from CyberWarfare thus far if “amateur hackers” with surreptitious affiliations with the state are blamed.

 According to Cyber experts, the criminals attack GMAIL accounts by a tactic known as “phishing” claiming to come from someone the user knows and trust. This highlights how easy it can be for individuals to get involved in releasing highly sensitive information without ever knowing. Therefore, for next week, I plan to learn more about understanding Computer Science and the common Cyber methods used compare it to my understanding of Moral Philosophy.

This week after Monday’s lecture I had a great chat with Seth Bullock and Jason Noble, the  lecturers of the complexity course.  They were kind enough to lend me a number of books and suggestions for reading.  I’ve been focusing on “Complexity A Guided Tour” by Melanie Mitchell, which I’ve been finding a very pleasurable read. It’s good to see the WWW get a whole section in her introduction as a primary example of a complex system. She’s been refreshing my thinking on dynamics, chaos, computation, evolution and genetics, and introducing me to some new ideas in information theory. Next stop: life and evolution in computers.

On Psychology, I’ve finished reading the relevant sections of Rupert Brown’s book on group processes, and am going to focus on research methods in social psychology.

This week I have struggled to achieve my aims set out in last week’s blog. Due to other coursework commitments my reading has taken a back seat and I have only managed to complete my reading on criminology. However I feel I have spent to long blogging about such a small part of my reading. I think next week I need to ensure I set aside enough time for reading both disciplines and try to be more concise when writing my blog. Hopefully this will mean my blogs will cover a lot more reading then they currently do.

So for criminology, this week I have been reading about the tradition of the rational actor model. This model can be traced back to a range of ideas (political, philosophical, economic, and social) that were developed during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The model is based on the idea that people have free will and make a choice to commit a crime in the same way that they would choose to take part in any other behaviour. This tradition has two major sets of influences:

Social contract theories – this is the idea that a lawful government can only exist with the voluntary agreement of human beings who have been able to exercise free will. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1678) argued that the key basis of any social contract is the involvement of human free will. However, Hobbes had a somewhat negative view of humanity and felt that there was a need for a ‘ruler’ or ‘institute’ (Leviathan) to support social contracts and enforce laws. It was here that the idea of the modern criminal justice system first emerged. This meant that contracts that subjects made between themselves could be legitimately enforced.  Alternatively, it was later argued by John Locke (1632-1704) that people should not be subjected to a Leviathan as people acquire their ‘natural rights to life and liberty from the Christian God.’ Therefore, these rights are not theirs to transfer to another. He suggested that if natural rights were to be conserved, then it required institutions to clarify, codify ad maintain the rights to life, liberty and property.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) argued that people were admirable, equal and free individuals in the beginning, but became morally corrupted as they came together in groups and societies and became dependent on each other. He argued it was necessary to create human laws that deem all to be equal and provide every individual with a free vote on the enactment of legislation. He also developed the concept of ‘general will’ – individuals also have a shared interest in the welfare of the community.

Therefore, when a human being chooses to freely enter into a contract to perform ‘civic duties,’ they can be seen as a ‘rational actor.’ To ensure compliance of contracts laws can be enforced, providing they have been approved by people who are party to the social contract.

Utilitarianism – This approach was developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, both of whom were political philosophers. It seeks to consider the rightness of acts, policies, decisions and choices by looking at the happiness of those affected by them. Bentham (1748-1832) suggested that morality was based on the actions of human beings that promoted happiness were to be seen as acceptable and those that produce the opposite were not. Happiness was considered to be pleasure and unhappiness pain. These were then assessed based on their intensity, duration, and proximity. The rightness of an act or policy was calculated based on the number of people experiencing pleasure and the overall balance of pain verses pleasure. This was accepted by Mill (1806-73) but he sought to define qualities and quantities of pleasure. He argued that the social consequences of an act or policy should be considered as the ‘good,’ and that some pleasures should rank higher than others. Both social factors and the quality of the act or policy were considered significant in providing reasoning for an individual’s behaviour. It was Bentham’s contribution that had the biggest impact on the rational actor theory, with his ideas of fear being the biggest control over a humans beings exercise of free will, and that punishment is considered the main way of creating fear, thus influences the free will of an individual and controlling their behaviour.

Next week I plan to try and achieve my aims set out in last week’s blog, ensuring that I cover enough reading but keep the blogs concise.

This week I have continued reading Small Places, Large Issues by Thomas Hylland Eriksen. After covering the introductory sections as last week, I wondered whether to skip forward to the chapters later in the book that the index points to for ‘Identity’, or to continue linearly from the beginning. After quickly skimming through the upcoming chapter, it seemed there was a lot of relevant material, so I continued on as before.

Titled “The Social Person” I had a feeling that this chapter could contain a lot of material that could be linked to Identity. Indeed one of the first issues covered is that of the different dimensions of human existence. These are divided into four categories in the following way:

Culture:            Cultural Universals            Cultural Variation

Nature:            Genetic Universals            Genetic Differences

The bottom two sections cover biological features in humans, which do not feature much in anthropologic research. However, the top sections are important and fundamental to anthropology, as there is much variation between humans that cannot be accounted for through genetic variation.

The next big point made is regarding language, and how although it is sometimes assumed that language is uniform across a whole group, it can be found that there is as much linguistic variation within the group.

The book then goes on to describe statuses and roles that account for the rights and duties that an individual may hold in relation to others, and which can vary depending on the situation. The example used to explain this is that of a bus driver, the driver’s status is ‘Bus Driver’, whereas his role is defined by what one does as a bus driver. The work of Goffman (1978 [1959]) is referenced in order to explain how one may switch between roles using “impression management” to appear a specific way in a certain situation. It is then stated that Goffman’s main idea is that social conventions define everything an individual does as a “social creature”. Everything one does follows culturally or socially defined rules.

One area that I read about last week, and didn’t include in my post is the distinction between a view from the inside of a culture, and the view from the outside. Two terms are used for this: emic and etic. Emic describes life as a member of a particular society experiences it, whereas the etic level is the analytical description of a researcher after observing a society. Taking this into account, Goffman’s role theory is an etic explanation as it as an abstraction of the processes of social life.

I was interested to read the next section, which moved on to talking about the Self. A distinction is made between the public and private self, with the “I” being the private self as seen from the inside, which isn’t easily assessed by anthropologists. This is something which I am certain will be covered when I begin to tackle Psychology, and will be an important area to compare and contrast the two disciplines. I am glad I decided to continue reading linearly, as with no reference to this section under Identity in the index I may well have missed it, although the concepts of the Self seem central to the issue of Identity. Maybe I am mistaken, and this will be cleared up once I read the main Identity section.

The biggest idea I took away from this section on the Self is the work of Brian Morris (1994) who distinguished three areas of personhood. Firstly, a person may be identified as a conscious and social human being, and is something which seems to be universal. Secondly, a person may be categorised as a cultural category, which the author explains may be more or less inclusive than the first point – some societies will exclude strangers for example from full personhood, but in others it may be that “non-human” entities may be included. Finally, there is the “I as opposed to others” component, which, depending on the culture, is interpreted differently.

Having advanced further into the realms of anthropology, I then decided to take another anthropology book, this time Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective by Roger M. Keesing and Andrew J. Strathern, and skim through the opening few chapters. My reason for this was to ensure that I had covered the same basic points relating to anthropology. Familiar topics such as the difficulty in defining culture, ethnocentrism, ethnography and social roles all appeared, giving me a fairly good boost of confidence that makes me think I’m heading in the right direction with anthropology.

Moral Philosophy is the philosophic study of moral values and rules. Here, Moral philosophy is addressed through meta-ethical questions about the nature of moral judgement that  addresses metaphysics, semantics, epistemology, and psychology of morality (Chingosho, 2006) .  According to Garner and Rosen (1967) there are three different types of Meta-ethical problems: what is the meaning of moral terms or judgments? What is the nature of moral judgments? How may moral judgments be supported or defended? Consequently, Williams tries to address these underpinning arguments of defining what is good, bad, right and wrong. 

However, one problematic notion to Moral Philosophy, Is whether everyone can be moral? Imagine people that oppose morality. Mr X for example, an individual in despair and hopelessness. Why should I do anything?  Why should I care if my life is meaningless? A man that may not be persuaded. As society we could help him, give him some reason to care about something, or argue a point of view, but is reasoning going to make him?  He is to many moralists a real challenge to moral reasoning.

There are many other important areas that Williams addresses, such as Subjectivism, Relativism and Utilitarianism. As with Subjectivism there can be no objective moral judgement. For example, a man’s moral judgement is a mere state of ones own attitudes. Moral judgements, therefore, cannot be determined as true and so is inevitably subjective towards individual opinion. In regards to Relativism, what I found interesting was determining moral outlooks between two societies, because moral truth is defined by a collective view of values and beliefs shaped by society. Subsequently, people from different societies will inevitably have differing perceived “Moral Truths”; it is a rationale of how one should not criticise the values from another society. In regards to Utilitarianism, it  holds that there is just one moral principle, which is to seek the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Despite the lack of agreement about how the term is used. It addresses happiness as the one intrinsically good thing. It is thus a form of Consequentialism, which is interested in the idea of what one does has consequences.

The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Benoit Mandelbrot

My interest in this book is that the author and founder of the theory of fractal geometry described it fairly recently in a paper as the essential introductory text in the area. Fractal geometry is basically an attempt to define mathematically the difference between complex data at separate scales. So if you imagine the coastline of a country, then measure that coastline with a 1 meter ruler and you will get a shorter distance than if you measure it with a 1cm ruler, and again with a 1mm ruler etc etc. It’s taken me a while to read because, having not studied maths for a while the terminology is quite alien, the concepts are simple enough but what I’m really looking for is the tools used to define the differences between scale and so I want to understand the maths properly.

The central importance of fractals to the study of cooperation (or indeed any other social construct) is that it allows you a potential way round a central issue in economics which is that social data is not linear in nature. My interest in looking into psychology and complexity is in seeing how other subjects tackle this problem. To illustrate the point, if you recall the research methods lecture with the economics professor we had the other week he was attempting to model migration patterns by reducing migration data to single values and then add in probabilistic margins for error. This is a typical way for an economist to tackle a complex area, you might have seen Mervin King from the bank of England giving his economic forecast today along the same lines – we know the data is complicated, we have introduced these assumptions and we believe this is a sensible percentage error. Is their another more accurate way to model this complex phenomena?

The approach Mandelbrot takes is to find a scale and measure it as accurately as you can with the tools available, then take as many more scales as you can and calculate the trend of increased or decreased complexity between the scales. This is fundamentally different from what you do in economics, in economics you scale your data up in a linear fashion (e.g. you calculate GDP by adding up the domestic output for each industry sector) which doesn’t account for that scale may be a factor in itself, you then add in a margin for error to account for the fact that you cant understand how the interactions between the actors who produce your data may change with scale.

Now, it’s fair to say that if your data is linear – i.e. one change always has one effect on one thing then there will be no difference in approaches but if by changing one thing has an effect on several things which has an effect on several more then the linear approach quickly gets to rather large margins for error rather quickly. The fractal approach doesn’t.

To summarise, fractal geometry is about understanding the changing shape of data at scale which captures the relationships between many data points. So if you know accurately what happens at one scale and the fractal dimension your data scales by you can predict accurately what your data will look like at larger scales or visa versa.

I’m now going to go look how a psychologist/sociologist attempts to quantify the phenomena they observe as a comparison. Any psychologist want to point out a book for me?