Understanding Complexity by Scott E. Page, Ph. D.

I recently completed Understanding Complexity from The Great Courses lectures produced by the Teaching Company which, as the title suggests, primarily concerns complexity science. The lectures were written and presented by Dr. Scott E. Page who has the fascinating title of “Leonid Hurwicz Collegiate Professor of Political Science, Complex Systems, and Economics” at the University of Michigan. So, how does one become an expert in complexity? Page completed his BA in mathematics at the University of Michigan, then an MA in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin, an MA in managerial economics from Northwestern University. He later earned a Ph.D. in Management Economics and Decision Science from Northwestern as well. I didn’t look up his dissertation but during the lecture series, he stated that his doctoral research was in game theory.

The course is divided into twelve 30-minute lectures and includes a course guide containing the professor’s additional notes and suggested further readings and resources. Since absolutely no one has suggested that I do so, I have decided to rank these source materials for SIP blog posts on a simple scale from 0 to 10, with 0 indicating I could find no redeeming value whatsoever in the course, lectures, book or other resource used as source material. On the other hand, 10 means I am prepared to form a cult based around these teachings. I would give the Understanding Complexity lectures a solid 7. 

Professor Page begins by making a distinction between system complexity and a system that is just particularly complicated. Four factors must be present to indicate that a system is complex: 1) It has a population of diverse agents that are 2) connected. They also exhibit behaviors and actions that are 3) interdependent and 4) they must demonstrate adaptation. 

One or the more insightful concepts of the course comes in the second lecture which describes evolutionary processes and the creation of diversity. In evolution new characteristics develop through mutation or sexual recombination. Since there is no intentionality in the process of evolution there is no bias for a particular search direction. Thus, evolutionary “search” takes place against the backdrop of an “evolutionary landscape.”

It is useful to think of each of the types of landscapes (simple, rugged, and/or dancing) as problems and the solution is to find the highest peak in a given landscape. Simple landscapes are like Mount Fuji—little variation of terrain, a steep slope straight up to a single peak. Rugged landscapes are like the Appalachian Mountains—there are many “local” peaks but finding the single highest peak will take some exploring and effort. Finally, a “dancing” landscape has local peaks and valleys (like its rugged counterpart) but it also changes with time. Dr. Page has us visualize being an extremely myopic hiker trying to find the global (or maximum) peak in the mountain and this serves as an allegory for evolutionary exploration. 

Now, I realize that the explanation I’ve given is neither clear nor concise but that is what’s great about Professor Page’s lecture series: He gives detailed elucidations with such clarity you almost think you understand the concepts until you start writing your blog posting and see that it was not as easy as he made it look. 

One last parting shot at communicating an idea that doesn’t seem like garbled lunacy. Emergence, in philosophy, systems thinking, and science, is how complex systems develop from numerous, much simpler component parts. An example of an emergent phenomenon from every day life can be demonstrated in the phrase “birds of a feather flock together.” Hundreds of birds follow simple, instinctive roles (maintain precise distance, stay aligned, avoid predators) and create this much larger, distinct thing: a flock. Dr. Page really got my attention when early on in the lecture series, he suggested that human consciousness might be an emergent property of the brain. No single neuron, synapse, or glial cell has any of the properties exhibited by the macro-level phenomena of human consciousness; however, the billions of these cells acting in concert do seem to be the building blocks of this emergent phenomenon that allows us to understand ourselves as a unique “I” operating at will within the world. 

The series touches on many other topics from several different domains. I think it is particularly useful for systems engineers and other engineers to keep this perspective about complexity. Unfortunately, this course is given in one of the shorter formats for Teaching Company lectures which was disappointing to me after I saw how enjoyable and applicable the series was. Part of this subject matter was germane to my dissertation in graduate school. Since then, I had lost a lot of enthusiasm for such topics and for decision science and operations research in particular. This series helped renew my interest and passion for the field. 

As always, happy learning! And keep pushing on!

Secret Warfare: The Battle of Codes & Ciphers by Bruce Norman

I recently finished reading the book Secret Warfare: The Battle of Codes & Ciphers by Bruce Norman.  It consists of 187 pages in 17 chapters.  The book used news accounts and anecdotes to tell the history of codes, ciphers, and intelligence work in general.  However, at least one-half of the book described techniques and historical narrative from the 20^th century (this book was written prior to 2000).

Cryptography was defined by the author as “the science of secret writing,” (p. 13).  It’s etymology is the Greek words kryptos (secret) and graphos (writing).  In practical terms, Norman explained, “cryptography is the art of sending messages in such a way that the real meaning is hidden from everyone but the sender and the subject.”

The cryptographer has two means by which he may accomplish his work: codes and ciphers. A code is a system of words that represents other words for secrecy and/or brevity.  A cipher is the same as a code, except, rather than operating at the level of whole words, ciphers work on single letters.  Then, there are two kinds of ciphers: transposition and substitution.  Transposition is a technique where the cryptographer, analyst, or spy “jumbles” the letters (i.e. “secret” becomes something like “resect”).  When the cryptographer uses substitution, letters are replaced with other letters, numbers, or symbols.  Finally, to build the most complex kind of cipher, the cryptographer may combine both transposition and substitution.

One of the first people to use cryptography to obtain knowledge for the battlefield was General Lysander of Sparta in 405 BCE.  Lysander had allied himself with the Persians as he fought Athens victoriously.  However, the Persians became envious of him and seemed poised to turn on him and attack Sparta.  Lysander felt he was in a bind.  A slave came with a message and Lysander read it.  Then, he asked for the slave’s belt.  Down the length of the slave’s belt was a string of meaningless letters.  He took a baton and wrapped the slave’s belt in a spiral around it, bringing the letters into alignment such that a message was revealed: The Persians were false and plotting against Lysander.  The general sailed against the Persians quickly and was victorious.

The obvious point of all of this work enciphering and deciphering is “to disguise the message in such a way that someone who has the code or knows the cipher can understand it whereas someone who does not know the secret, cannot,” (p. 14).

Julius Caesar wrote to Cicero using a substitution cipher.  Caesar would take his message and move every letter three places down the alphabet.  Today, this simple cipher would offer almost no security.  Adding a it of complexity, however, can yield a useful cipher system.  The following cipher is of Greek origin.  The letters of the alphabet are arranged into a square and numbers substituted for letters.  There are five columns by five rows, with the letters I and J put in the same placeholder.  It looks like this:

            1          2          3          4          5

1          L          B         O         S          F

2          E          V         U         G         R

3          X         A         M         C         Y

4          N         T          D         Z          K

5          W        H         I/J        Q         P

Thus, to encode the message “charge,” first write the number from the row, then the column.  So, for letter C, use 34. The full word/message: 34 52 32 25 24 21.  You can see that leaving the numbers with the same spacing, etc. makes the cipher vulnerable to being “cracked.”  Therefore, to confuse codebreakers coded messages are written in five-figure groups called code groups. Then, use zero (called nulls) to complete the five-figure group for ay remaining digits.  So, the previous message would be written:  34523 22524 21000.

Author Norman populated the text with numerous examples of codes and ciphers in various historical periods. One interesting example was from the Renaissance.  Abbot Trithemius, a Benedictine monk, wrote the first book on cryptography titled Polygraphia in 1518. Trithemius’s method was quite interesting to me.  It is a simple substitution cipher, but instead of using letters or other characters, each letter of the text to be enciphered is replaced by an entire word or phrase. There are several words or phrases for each letter and any can be used (from a pre-determined list).

Another interesting chapter discussed Captain Frederick Marryat’s development of a system of colored flags for naval signals which he called semaphore. It also discussed S.F.B. Morse’s electromagnetic telegraph and his famous alphabetic system of signals called “Morse Code.”  But perhaps my favorite cipher in the entire text was the “Pig-Pen Cipher,” which was used by Union prisoners held in Confederate prison camps during the Civil War.  With the Pig-Pen Cipher, the alphabet is written in a nine-cell diagram.

ABC	DEF	GHI
JKL	MNO	PQR
STU	VWX	YZ

Then each letter of your message indicated by drawing the section you are using plus one dot to indicate the second letter of the group, two dots to represent the third letter of the group, and no dots to indicate the first letter in the group.  Thus, the word “student” is given as:

___      ___      ___                              ____    ___

     |        * |      ** |      |___|     |_*_|     |_*_|       *  |

At least, that’s the best I can render for now.

This is just a small sample of the coding and ciphering techniques demonstrated in Norman’s book.  As I indicated earlier, it is a bit of an older book and I have several other books on codes and cryptography (some of which I may review here as I complete them). Secret Warfare is, on balance, well written and rich with historical context.  The chapters describing codes and code breaking activity during World War II are particularly enlightening.  It is amazing to realize the extent to which code breaking and code security contributed to outcomes on the battlefield.

As always, happy learning!