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Author: Carol Mershon
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472054236
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
A formal model in the social sciences builds explanations when it structures the reasoning underlying a theoretical argument, opens venues for controlled experimentation, and can lead to hypotheses. Yet more importantly, models evaluate theory, build theory, and enhance conjectures. Formal Modeling in Social Science addresses the varied helpful roles of formal models and goes further to take up more fundamental considerations of epistemology and methodology. The authors integrate the exposition of the epistemology and the methodology of modeling and argue that these two reinforce each other. They illustrate the process of designing an original model suited to the puzzle at hand, using multiple methods in diverse substantive areas of inquiry. The authors also emphasize the crucial, though underappreciated, role of a narrative in the progression from theory to model. Transparency of assumptions and steps in a model means that any analyst will reach equivalent predictions whenever she replicates the argument. Hence, models enable theoretical replication, essential in the accumulation of knowledge. Formal Modeling in Social Science speaks to scholars in different career stages and disciplines and with varying expertise in modeling.
Author: Carol Mershon
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472054236
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Get Book Here
Book Description
A formal model in the social sciences builds explanations when it structures the reasoning underlying a theoretical argument, opens venues for controlled experimentation, and can lead to hypotheses. Yet more importantly, models evaluate theory, build theory, and enhance conjectures. Formal Modeling in Social Science addresses the varied helpful roles of formal models and goes further to take up more fundamental considerations of epistemology and methodology. The authors integrate the exposition of the epistemology and the methodology of modeling and argue that these two reinforce each other. They illustrate the process of designing an original model suited to the puzzle at hand, using multiple methods in diverse substantive areas of inquiry. The authors also emphasize the crucial, though underappreciated, role of a narrative in the progression from theory to model. Transparency of assumptions and steps in a model means that any analyst will reach equivalent predictions whenever she replicates the argument. Hence, models enable theoretical replication, essential in the accumulation of knowledge. Formal Modeling in Social Science speaks to scholars in different career stages and disciplines and with varying expertise in modeling.
Author: Scott de Marchi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521853620
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
Offers an overview of mathematical modeling concentrating on game theory, statistics and computational modeling.
Author: John A. Sokolowski
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118210948
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 211
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Book Description
Explores wide-ranging applications of modeling and simulation techniques that allow readers to conduct research and ask "What if?" Principles of Modeling and Simulation: A Multidisciplinary Approach is the first book to provide an introduction to modeling and simulation techniques across diverse areas of study. Numerous researchers from the fields of social science, engineering, computer science, and business have collaborated on this work to explore the multifaceted uses of computational modeling while illustrating their applications in common spreadsheets. The book is organized into three succinct parts: Principles of Modeling and Simulation provides a brief history of modeling and simulation, outlines its many functions, and explores the advantages and disadvantages of using models in problem solving. Two major reasons to employ modeling and simulation are illustrated through the study of a specific problem in conjunction with the use of related applications, thus gaining insight into complex concepts. Theoretical Underpinnings examines various modeling techniques and introduces readers to two significant simulation concepts: discrete event simulation and simulation of continuous systems. This section details the two primary methods in which humans interface with simulations, and it also distinguishes the meaning, importance, and significance of verification and validation. Practical Domains delves into specific topics related to transportation, business, medicine, social science, and enterprise decision support. The challenges of modeling and simulation are discussed, along with advanced applied principles of modeling and simulation such as representation techniques, integration into the application infrastructure, and emerging technologies. With its accessible style and wealth of real-world examples, Principles of Modeling and Simulation: A Multidisciplinary Approach is a valuable book for modeling and simulation courses at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels. It is also an indispensable reference for researchers and practitioners working in statistics, mathematics, engineering, computer science, economics, and the social sciences who would like to further develop their understanding and knowledge of the field.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030911862X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 423
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Book Description
Today's military missions have shifted away from fighting nation states using conventional weapons toward combating insurgents and terrorist networks in a battlespace in which the attitudes and behaviors of civilian noncombatants may be the primary effects of military actions. To support these new missions, the military services are increasingly interested in using models of the behavior of humans, as individuals and in groups of various kinds and sizes. Behavioral Modeling and Simulation reviews relevant individual, organizational, and societal (IOS) modeling research programs, evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the programs and their methodologies, determines which have the greatest potential for military use, and provides guidance for the design of a research program to effectively foster the development of IOS models useful to the military. This book will be of interest to model developers, operational military users of the models and their managers, and government personnel making funding decisions regarding model development.
Author: Thomas Boyer-Kassem
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190680539
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Current scientific research almost always requires collaboration among several (if not several hundred) specialized researchers. When scientists co-author a journal article, who deserves credit for discoveries or blame for errors? How should scientific institutions promote fruitful collaborations among scientists? In this work, leading philosophers of science address these critical questions
Author: Michael E. Brown
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262265256
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
Opposing views on the merits of formal rational choice approaches as they have been applied to international security studies. Formal theories and rational choice methods have become increasingly prominent in most social sciences in the past few decades. Proponents of formal theoretical approaches argue that these methods are more scientific and sophisticated than other approaches, and that formal methods have already generated significant theoretical progress. As more and more social scientists adopt formal theoretical approaches, critics have argued that these methods are flawed and that they should not become dominant in most social-science disciplines. Rational Choice and Security Studies presents opposing views on the merits of formal rational choice approaches as they have been applied in the subfield of international security studies. This volume includes Stephen Walt's article "Rigor or Rigor Mortis? Rational Choice and Security Studies," critical replies from prominent political scientists, and Walt's rejoinder to his critics. Walt argues that formal approaches have not led to creative new theoretical explanations, that they lack empirical support, and that they have contributed little to the analysis of important contemporary security problems. In their replies, proponents of rational choice approaches emphasize that formal methods are essential for achieving theoretical consistency and precision.
Author: Paul Diesing
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351500473
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
Social scientists are often vexed because their work does not satisfy the criteria of "scientific" methodology developed by philosophers of science and logicians who use the natural sciences as their model. In this study, Paul Diesing defines science not by reference to these arbitrary norms delineated by those outside the field but in terms of norms implicit in what social scientists actually do in their everyday work.
Author: Anol Bhattacherjee
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781475146127
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
This book is designed to introduce doctoral and graduate students to the process of conducting scientific research in the social sciences, business, education, public health, and related disciplines. It is a one-stop, comprehensive, and compact source for foundational concepts in behavioral research, and can serve as a stand-alone text or as a supplement to research readings in any doctoral seminar or research methods class. This book is currently used as a research text at universities on six continents and will shortly be available in nine different languages.
Author: Jon Elster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107071186
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 517
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Book Description
A substantially revised edition of Jon Elster's critically acclaimed book exploring the nature of social behavior and the social sciences.
Author: Hunter Heyck
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421417103
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
In the years after World War II, a new generation of scholars redefined the central concepts and practices of social science in America. Before the Second World War, social scientists struggled to define and defend their disciplines. After the war, “high modern” social scientists harnessed new resources in a quest to create a unified understanding of human behavior—and to remake the world in the image of their new model man. In Age of System, Hunter Heyck explains why social scientists—shaped by encounters with the ongoing “organizational revolution” and its revolutionary technologies of communication and control—embraced a new and extremely influential perspective on science and nature, one that conceived of all things in terms of system, structure, function, organization, and process. He also explores how this emerging unified theory of human behavior implied a troubling similarity between humans and machines, with freighted implications for individual liberty and self-direction. These social scientists trained a generation of decision-makers in schools of business and public administration, wrote the basic textbooks from which millions learned how the economy, society, polity, culture, and even the mind worked, and drafted the position papers, books, and articles that helped set the terms of public discourse in a new era of mass media, think tanks, and issue networks. Drawing on close readings of key texts and a broad survey of more than 1,800 journal articles, Heyck follows the dollars—and the dreams—of a generation of scholars that believed in “the system.” He maps the broad landscape of changes in the social sciences, focusing especially intently on the ideas and practices associated with modernization theory, rational choice theory, and modeling. A highly accomplished historian, Heyck relays this complicated story with unusual clarity.
