These lectures provide an introduction to the directed percolation and directed animals problems, from a physicists point of view. The probabilistic cellular automaton formulation of directed percolation is introduced. The planar duality of the diode-resistor-insulator percolation problem in two dimensions, and relation of the directed percolation to undirected first passage percolation problem are described. Equivalence of the $d$-dimensional directed animals problem to $(d-1)$-dimensional Yang-Lee edge-singularity problem is established. Self-organized critical formulation of the percolation problem, which does not involve any fine-tuning of coupling constants to get critical behavior is briefly discussed.
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