Sociomeeting: Journal club on sloppiness

In this sociomeeting Fernado Díaz will guide a journal club covering two papers on the topic of sloppy models (references below). Sloppyness in a model refers to the fact that many models have macroscopic characteristics that are independent of their microscopic parameters and thus can be described with a pretty reduced set of parameters. The papers discuss this phenomenon as an integral part of the hierarchy in physical theories and showcase it in Renormalization Group-type processes.

Attendants are expected to have read at least one of the papers.

Transtrum, M. K., Machta, B. B., Brown, K. S., Daniels, B. C., Myers, C. R., & Sethna, J. P. (2015). Perspective: Sloppiness and emergent theories in physics, biology, and beyond. The Journal of chemical physics, 143(1). arXiv

 

Machta, Benjamin B., et al. "Parameter space compression underlies emergent theories and predictive models." Science 342.6158 (2013): 604-607. (arXiv)