What are complex systems and what techniques can we use to analyze them?
Prof. Cristina Masoller
Departament de Fisica, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya.
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics recognized the fundamental role of complex systems in understanding our climate and the origin of climate change. The key properties of complex systems are high dimensionality and nonlinearity. Furthermore, complex systems are heterogeneous and multiscale. When dealing with a complex system, progress in its characterization and forecast requires the use of appropriate analysis techniques. Linear techniques often fail to characterize or predict behavior. In this talk, I will present our work in the characterization of some paradigmatic complex systems, and I will discuss the data analysis techniques that we have used to analyze them. I will discuss how symbolic analysis has allowed us to uncover statistical similarities in the spikes of lasers and neurons; how Hilbert analysis has allowed us to reveal significant changes in our climate that have occurred in recent decades; and how information measures such as permutation entropy and transfer entropy have allowed us to infer causality and detect changes in EEG signals and spatial vegetation fields.