Santa Fe Institute

In trying to optimize a data-rich process using many sources of information, scientists traditionally have used their intuitions to choose from information sources on the fly. SFI External Professor David Wolpert wants to let machines do it instead.

SFI researchers are drawing on information theory and a couple of remarkable datasets – hundreds of years of courtroom transcripts and thousands of military action reports – to discover hidden patterns in information.

SFI Omidyar Fellow Paul Hooper wants to understand how economics and human social behavior have co-evolved through human history to create the highly complex institutions we are a part of today

A recent SFI workshop on "Network Structure and Inequality" examined social network structure as a way to make predictions about how the distribution of wealth changes over time in human societies.

Wikipedia's remarkable accuracy and usefulness comes from something larger than the sum of its written contributions, a new study by SFI Research Fellow Simon DeDeo finds.

SFI's 2013 Community Lecture series debuted March 14 with UC-Boulder's Leysia Palen describing how victims, observers, and “citizen-responders” are using modern technology to participate in disaster response. Watch her presentation.

Eugene and Clare Thaw have given their former Tesuque, New Mexico, home to SFI. The new Tesuque Campus will become a quiet, contemplative setting for Institute scholars and visitors.

A new quantitative study of the online multiplayer game Pardus examines ways men and women manage their social networks drastically different, even online.

A new research project now under way at SFI, in collaboration with Slum Dwellers International and backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, seeks to expand the scientific study of urban slums worldwide.

Running thousands of simulations of two-person games with many possible payoffs yields support for a hypothesis that some games are unlearnable, and that equilibrium models are not terribly relevant for understanding players' decisions in complex games and financial markets.

Two SFI researchers offer a coherent picture of how metabolism, and thus all life, arose. Their paper offers new insights into the likelihood of life emerging and evolving as it did on Earth, and the chances of it arising elsewhere.

SFI's crowdfunding campaign has reached its goal. The resulting research will help scientists preserve the threatened landscapes on which indigenous human groups depend. 

The 2012 Science On Screen series in Santa Fe wrapped up December 13 to a full house, with "The Gods Must Be Crazy" and Murray Gell-Mann's distinctive insight and witty analysis of the groundbreaking 1980 comedy.

Michael Mauboussin, Managing Director for Global Investment Strategies at Credit Suisse, has been elected chairman of the Santa Fe Institute’s Board of Trustees. His three-year appointment began November 4, 2012.

SFI today announced that its Omidyar Fellows program will be expanded for 2013, with enhancements designed to sharpen the program’s focus on preparing promising early-career scientists to lead tomorrow’s most critical scientific research.

SFI Distinguished Professor Geoffrey West offers a glimpse of the mathematical regularities scientists are discovering underlying organisms and cities, and asks what processes could have given rise to these patterns.

SFI's 2012 Stanislaw Ulam Memorial Lecture Series featured renowned zoologist and complexity pioneer Robert May, who considered the complex systems that matter most to humanity's future. Watch his lectures.

In some human societies, men transfer their wealth to their sister's sons, a practice that puzzles evolutionary biologists. A new study by SFI's Laura Fortunato has produced insights into "matrilineal inheritance."

In an SFI Community Lecture on September 12 in Santa Fe, anthropologist Scott Ortman explored the critical role conceptualization and metaphor play in shaping culture and human history. Watch his lecture.

In a recent paper, three researchers demonstrate an analysis method that not only resolves statistical difficulties presented by certain urban data such as rates of violent crime, but also fits real-world crime data.

At a unique event in Santa Fe, SFI's Geoffrey West and Cochiti Pueblo artist Mateo Romero discussed how creativity influences and inspires their work.

In a recent paper, a team of researchers questioned weaknesses in current economic models and introduced their own model that better captures the U.S. housing market's behaviors.

In a new paper, a team of scientists examined voter data from a dozen recent elections around the world and found strong evidence for election fraud in two of them.

Indoor climbing gyms offer all sorts of routes, ranging from “ladder difficulty” for novice climbers to scant trails of nubs requiring an expert’s strength, skill, and focus.

In a recent SFI panel discussion, some of the biggest thinkers in science explored why and how complexity is a pervasive feature of our universe -- in systems from genes to societies. Watch it here.