MATH-UA.0395 Special Topics: Dynamic Modeling
Fall Semester 2026
Tues-Thurs 3:30 pm - 4:45 pm
Instructor: Professor Joshua M. Epstein
Email: je65@nyu.edu
Office Hours: TBD
Course Assistant: TBD
Course Assistant Email: TBD
Course Description
This course aims to equip and embolden students to develop original dynamic models in areas of interest to them. Dynamic models concern how systems unfold in time. This course covers strengths, weaknesses, and formal connections between several major dynamic modeling approaches, including differential equations and agent-based computational modeling. Gives students a compact flexible dynamic model ‘Construction Kit’ with elementary building blocks drawn from these and complementary approaches, with diverse applications to epidemiology, inequality, contagious violence, competition, neuroscience, extinction events, evolutionary games, and financial panics. Unification, in which the same abstract formalism is revealed to explain seemingly remote phenomena, is stressed throughout. Consequential dynamic modeling papers are discussed in class. Original student models (or substantial extensions of existing ones) as Final Projects.
Course Format
This four-credit (4) course will meet twice per week during the semester, at 75 minutes per session. This course is offered on campus and in person.
Prerequisites
Three semesters of calculus, basic matrix algebra and probability theory, and some facility in any programming language. Students will learn the rudiments of agent-based modeling using software materials provided.
Grading
Final Project: 70%, Assignments: 20%, Class Participation: 10%. Final Projects can be an original model or the substantial extension of an existing model. Team projects allowed with permission of Instructor.