Re: Modeling the Emergence of Political Parties

[glen e. p. ropella]

At 11:11 AM 10/21/99 -0500, you wrote:
> I have a paper in the new American Behavioral Scientist called
> "Simulation modeling in Political Science".  In there, I make the
> argument that the formal theories have the advantage of a clear goal--an
> equilibrium and comparative statics.  With simulation, the problem is
> that we often have no clear notion of what a result is, how to identify
> something interesting.  You've already seen that, when you work on a
> topic that the formal theory guys have tackled, they've laid out the
> idea of results and the structure of the model so you know what you are
> shooting for. If you launch off into some new research area, you have
> trouble finding grounding and a notion of closure.

Ack!!  Paul, I was going to leave off reading my email and get
some work done until I saw your message.  Be careful saying stuff
like "With simulation, the problem is that we often have no clear
notion of what a result is..."

That is absolutely not true!  There is a whole body of knowledge
on how to do simulation.  And it contains reams of instructions,
methodologies, definitions, etc. on how to correctly simulate
something.  Of course, you can't look to science for this info.
It's all in engineering, which, I admit, is overcrowded with
all sorts of technical mumbo-jumbo.  But, it is there.

Simulation is not the black-art people claim it is.  It's just
as clear about how to get a result from a simulation as it is
about how to get a result from mathematics.  Neither is simple;
but, both are well-developed.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...
glen

--
glen e. p. ropella =><= Feeding the hamster wheel.  Hail Eris!
Home: http://www.trail.com/~gepr                (505) 424-0448
Work: http://www.swarm.com                      (505) 995-0818


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