What can computer simulation contribute to the social sciences? Which of the many approaches to simulation would be best for my social science project? How do I design, carry out and analyse the results from a computer simulation? Interest in social simulation has been growing rapidly worldwide as a result of increasingly powerful hardware and software and also a rising interest in the application of ideas of complexity, evolution, adaptation and chaos in the social sciences. "Simulation for the Social Scientist" is a practical textbook on the techniques of building computer simulations to assist understanding of social and economic issues and problems. This authoritative book details all the common approaches to social simulation, to provide social scientists with an appreciation of the literature and allow those with some programming skills to create their own simulations.New for this edition are a new chapter on designing multi-agent systems, to support the fact that multi-agent modelling has become the most common approach to simulation, and new examples and guides to current software Updated throughout to take new approaches into account. The book is an essential tool for social scientists in a wide range of fields, particularly sociology, economics, anthropology, geography, organizational theory, political science, social policy, cognitive psychology and cognitive science. It will also appeal to computer scientists interested in distributed artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems and agent technologies.

This book presents an introduction to agent-based computational sociology and the kind of science that is done with agent-based models. The focus is on marking the difference between what is intended for sociology as a science and what is not, emphasizes is given to the idea that the complexity of social phenomena and the peculiarities of complex social systems should not condemn sociology but to embrace qualitative un-formalised historical accounts as the only methods to do research. Cooperation and Social Norms, Social Patterns and Dynamics and Future Prospects and Challenges feature throughout the book along with an accompanying website. The website will feature instructions and codes of the models. The website will also support new functionalities, such as educational programmes, further examples and research announcements. Agent-Based Computational Sociology is written in a common sociological language, along with examples of models that look at all the traditional explanatory challenges of sociology, with focus on epistemological, methodological and substantive issues, by combining theory and examples.

How do social structures and group behaviors arise from the interaction of individuals? Growing Artificial Societies approaches this question with cutting-edge computer simulation techniques. Fundamental collective behaviors such as group formation, cultural transmission, combat, and trade are seen to "emerge" from the interaction of individual agents following a few simple rules.In their program, named Sugarscape, Epstein and Axtell begin the development of a "bottom up" social science that is capturing the attention of researchers and commentators alike.The study is part of the 2050 Project, a joint venture of the Santa Fe Institute, the World Resources Institute, and the Brookings Institution. The project is an international effort to identify conditions for a sustainable global system in the next century and to design policies to help achieve such a system.Growing Artificial Societies is also available on CD-ROM, which includes about 50 animations that develop the scenarios described in the text.Copublished with the Brookings Institution