Tutorial materials for the RIKEN Wako Science Camp 2026 Computational Group Dynamics (COGNAC) Collaboration Unit, RIKEN Center for Brain Science
A 3-day crash course for high-school students on agent-based modelling of social learning and collective behaviour using R. Students build learning agents from scratch, let them copy each other, discover the wisdom and madness of crowds, run a mini research project — and present their new discoveries!
- When: 27–30 July, 2026 (core teaching/group work days: 28–29 July)
- Who: High-school students (no advanced programming experience assumed)
- Language: English (with Japanese word lists for key terms)
- Follow
setup/setup_guide.md— install R and RStudio before the camp - Open
ScienceHighSchool.Rprojin RStudio (this makes all file paths work) - Open
tutorials/01_welcome_to_r_notebook.Rmd - Run each code block with the green Run button. Change the code in the notebook and run it again to see what changes.
The original .qmd and .html tutorials are still kept as static reading
copies.
| Folder | Contents |
|---|---|
tutorials/ |
Five interactive R Notebooks, plus static Quarto/HTML copies |
slides/ |
Lecture slide decks + the students' final-presentation template |
R/ |
Clean model code (bandit_functions.R), the playable slot-machine game, verification script |
project/ |
Mini-project menu for the final presentation |
setup/ |
Installation guide + test_setup.R |
data/ |
Game records from the students (created during the camp) |
instructor/ |
Teaching notes: schedule, pacing, pitfalls, backup plans |
| # | Tutorial | Key idea | Camp slot |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Welcome to R | variables, vectors, randomness | pre-camp only — Day 1 has no course time |
| 2 | Building Toy Worlds | models, Monte Carlo, random walks | Day 2 morning |
| 3 | An Agent That Learns | bandits, prediction error, explore–exploit | Day 2 afternoon |
| 4 | Learning From Others | social learning strategies, conformity | Day 3 morning |
| 5 | Wisdom & Madness of Crowds | collective intelligence, herding | Day 3 morning |
| — | Mini project + presentation | doing science | Day 3 afternoon → Day 4 |
Course blocks are fixed by the camp organisers: 09:00–17:20 on Days 2–3,
09:00–15:00 on Day 4 (presentations start 15:40). See
instructor/teaching_notes.md for the full
official schedule, including the joint events (facility tour, researcher
dinner) that bookend each day.
The scientific through-line: simple individual rules → rich collective outcomes. The capstone model reproduces the main result of Toyokawa, Whalen & Laland (2019, Nature Human Behaviour): moderate social learning produces collective wisdom, excessive conformity produces herding.
All simulation code is tested by:
Rscript R/verify_simulations.RThese materials are a high-school-level adaptation of ideas taught at the COSMOS Summer School (Computational Summer school on Modeling Social and collective behavior), co-organised with Charley Wu (University of Tübingen/TU Darmstadt). COSMOS teaching notebooks are publicly available on the COSMOS website and are the recommended next step for students who want to go deeper.