The uses of mathematics in the social sciences

✍ Scribed by Herbert A. Simon

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1978
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 828 KB
• Volume: 20
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0378-4754
• DOI: 10.1016/0378-4754(78)90065-4

✦ Synopsis

Applications of mathematics to the social and behavioral sciences have burgeoned since the Second World War. Classical techniques of analysis have found wide application, particularly in economics; and in recent years applications of combinatorial mathematics have become increasingly common. Methods of analysis that depend upon only ordinal properties of the variables are particularly useful in the social sciences outside economics.

Over the past twenty years, the techniques of computer simulation have been developed to complement classical mathematics. Many theories in contemporary cognitive psychology are expressed in the form of computer programs, and are tested by comparing the behavior of the programs with the behavior of human subjects in identical task environments.

* The definitive treatment is in ref. [ Ill. * [4]. The mathematical model is described in [12].