$19.95
Why do some ideas spread while others disappear? Why do groups organize themselves in predictable ways? How can simple individual choices produce surprisingly complex social patterns? And how can we make better decisions when human behavior is anything but simple?
Human Complex Systems is a practical introduction to the theories, tools, and techniques of computational social science.
Rather than presenting one grand theory of human behavior, Dario Nardi offers a toolbox of models for looking at people, groups, organizations, cultures, and societies from multiple angles. Readers learn how to turn observations into testable ideas, explore “what if?” scenarios through modeling and simulation, work with data, and recognize the assumptions hidden inside the ways we ordinarily explain the world.
Along the way, explore: memes and the spread of ideas, social networks, complex systems, multi-agent modeling, temperament needs and values, culture and group dynamics, competition and adaptation, decision-making, exchange, learning, data analysis, and human development.
Accessible, interdisciplinary, and filled with concrete examples, Human Complex Systems invites readers to do more than describe or debate the social world. It shows how to model it, test it, view it from multiple perspectives—and think more clearly about how it works.
220 pages, 8.5" x 11" textbook format