ASB 430: Social Simulation

[This course can be taken for CS studies requirement]

Spring 2009

Professor: Marco Janssen

Course content
What make certain blogs popular? Why have ancient societies collapsed? These and other questions on social phenomena can be studied by the use of computer simulation. This course introduces computer simulation to study social processes such as diffusion of knowledge and culture, cooperation and conflict, crowd behavior, and foraging. Gradually students will learn to use the software and build their own models. Furthermore, a brief introduction to relevant social science theories is given. The students will have hands on experience in developing simple simulation models of a number of social phenomena.  The class also has a number of small assignments and one final project.

Topics covered in the course are: complex adaptive systems, emergence, cellular automata, agent-based modeling, social dilemmas, crowd behavior, diffusion processes, social network models, artificial societies.

Course format
Lectures, discussion, computer lab, home work assignments, group research project

Required book

Nigel Gilbert and Klaus G. Troitzsch (2005) Simulation for the Social Scientist (2nd edition), Open University Press.

Software