Christopher X J. Jensen
Professor, Pratt Institute

US EPA’s EnviroAtlas project promises to give researchers, students new insights into the geography of ecosystem services

Posted 13 Aug 2013 / 0

At the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, I first learned about a really interesting initiative of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The project –now dubbed EnviroAtlas — is dedicated to creating a free, interactive online tool for exploring the geography of ecosystem services. I had the opportunity to check out a beta version Read More

A Major Post, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Bogs & Wetlands, Climate Change, Computer Science, Conservation Biology, Deserts, Ecology, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Educational Software and Apps, Environmental Justice, Freshwater Ecosystems, Geography, Grasslands, Habitat Destruction, Information Design, Invasive Species, Pollution, Ponds & Lakes, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Rivers & Streams, Sociology, Sustainability, Teaching, Teaching Tools, Temperate Forest, Temperate Rainforest, Terrestrial, Tropical Forest, Water Supply, Web

Working on a VUE concept map of the fieldTest simulation

Posted 22 Jun 2013 / 0

Jennifer Verdolin, Dylan Moore, and I created the fieldTest simulator several years ago. This individual-based simulation allows virtual animals with the potential to form social groups that defend territories to interact on landscapes containing different patterns and abundances of resources, and is part of my larger research into group territorial behavior. We presented our results at the 2009 Read More

A Major Post, Behavioral Ecology, Competition, Concept Mapping, Department of Mathematics & Science, Ecological Modeling, Group Territorial Behavior, Individual-based Models, Information Design, Spatially Explicit Modeling

Green port policies yield big decreases in the ecological footprint of shipping

Posted 26 Jan 2013 / 0

National Geographic “California Ports Go Green” This is a nice infographic showing that changes in policy can have a big impact on the sustainability of commerce. It is amazing how much efficiency improvements can lower ecological impacts.

A Minor Post, Articles, Economics, Information Design, Public Policy, Sustainable Transportation

Infographic signs on the road to game theory understanding

Posted 16 Aug 2012 / 0

Game Theory Icons These are pretty clever. I have not walked my way through them yet, but they use arrows to show the relative gradient of payoff for each player, and a little blue circle to represent Nash equilibrium (if any) for the game. What I have not yet figured out with these is whether Read More

A Minor Post, Game Theory, Information Design

PNAS paper explores the role of population structure in facilitating reciprocity

Posted 12 Jun 2012 / 3

The “Early Edition” of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America just posted online a paper entitled “Direct reciprocity in structured populations“. Authored by Matthijs van Veelen, Julián García, David G. Rand, and Martin A. Nowak, the paper combines two well-explored factors that influence how cooperation evolves: repeated Read More

Articles, Behavior, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Information Design, Reciprocity, Social Networks

Evolutionary Games Infographic Project launches with its first release of graphic packages

Posted 04 Jun 2012 / 0

In the Fall of 2011 I began a new project with Greg Riestenberg, a graduate student in Pratt’s Communications Design program. Given the ubiquity — especially in recent times — of evolutionary game theory, you would think that someone would have produced a set of clear conceptual images depicting how the most important of these games work; Read More

Department of Mathematics & Science, Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design, Pratt Institute, Teaching, Teaching Tools

Evolutionary Games Infographic Project: Ultimatum Game “conceptual” images

Posted 15 Mar 2012 / 0

UPDATE: The images discussed below are now available for free use on the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project page. To complete the set of Evolutionary Games Infographic images that Greg Riestenberg and I have been working on, we created a set of “conceptual” matrices for the Ultimatum Game (UG). These are meant to complement the conceptual images we Read More

Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design

Evolutionary Games Infographic Project: First “sequence” images

Posted 05 Mar 2012 / 0

UPDATE: The images discussed below are now available for free use on the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project page. This semester I have been working with Greg Riestenberg, a graduate student in Pratt’s Communications Design program, to come up with a new series of images designed to explain some common evolutionary games. Our first images for the Read More

Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design

Evolutionary Games Infographic Project: New “conceptual” images

Posted 06 Feb 2012 / 0

UPDATE: The images discussed below are now available for free use on the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project page. For the past two semesters I have been working with Greg Riestenberg, a graduate student in Pratt’s Communications Design program, to come up with a new series of images designed to explain some common evolutionary games (I am Read More

Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design

Evolutionary Games Infographic Project: First “examples” matrices

Posted 21 Nov 2011 / 1

UPDATE: The images discussed below are now available for free use on the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project page. To complement the “conceptual” images we created to depict the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Hawk-Dove, and Stag Hunt games, Greg Riestenberg and I have been developing a series of “example” images showing how the payoffs of these games are produced Read More

A Major Post, Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design