Dr. David Perlmutter should be ashamed for contributing to the trend of lumping ADHD in with huge lists of symptoms such as (quote):
"dementia, decreased libido, depression, chronic headaches, anxiety, epilepsy, and ADHD"
ADD and ADHD may not be as crippling as some mental conditions, but there is real peer-reviewed medical research out there concerning diagnosis and treatment. Hint: counseling and doctor-prescribed medication is more effective than homeopathy and trivial diet changes. People just want an easy solution and someone to blame.
Not sure about individual-scale models, but Markov Chains are common in Mathematical Ecology. You can do quite a lot in animal group modeling with transition matrices and basic probability theory. This is a good book if you can get it cheap (like most monograph textbooks):
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Stochastic-Processes-Biol...
Also, props to submission author Victor Powell. Those force-directed graphs are visually interesting, add to the article, and are even responsive (try changing the window size).
Can you recommend a book or project idea for building intuition on messy data? When it comes up in my hobby projects I compromise on the fly, and a professional approach would be much better.
I have heard good things about the "Bad Data Handbook", though I can't vouch for it personally. Recommended by a co-worker I will get to read it eventually
ADD and ADHD may not be as crippling as some mental conditions, but there is real peer-reviewed medical research out there concerning diagnosis and treatment. Hint: counseling and doctor-prescribed medication is more effective than homeopathy and trivial diet changes. People just want an easy solution and someone to blame.