The Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan hosted an intensive day-long training on some of the basics of machine learning for graduate students and interested faculty and staff. Jake Hofman, a Microsoft researcher who also teaches this subject at Columbia University, was the instructor, and the session was both …
Observation, measurement, and explanation
An earlier post reiterated my reasons for doubting that the social sciences can in principle give rise to general theories that serve to organize and predict the domain of social phenomena. The causes of social events are too heterogeneous and conjunctural to permit this kind of systematic representation. That said, social behavior and social processes …
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ANT-style critique of ABM
A short recent article in the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation by Venturini, Jensen, and Latour lays out a critique of the explanatory strategy associated with agent-based modeling of complex social phenomena (link). (Thanks to Mark Carrigan for the reference via Twitter; @mark_carrigan.) Tommaso Venturini is an expert on digital media networks at …
John von Neumann and stochastic simulations
source: Monte Carlo method (Wikipedia) John von Neumann was one of the genuine mathematical geniuses of the twentieth century. A particularly interesting window onto von Neumann's scientific work is provided by George Dyson in his book, Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe. The book is as much an intellectual history of the mathematics and …
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The similarity space of actor-centered research frameworks
There are a number of approaches to the study of the social world that give special priority to individuals in social settings. Rational choice theory and game theory (Becker, Harsanyi) attempt to understand social outcomes as the result of the strategies and calculations of rational actors. Actor-centered sociology and pragmatist theory attempt to uncover a …
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An evolutionary view of research frameworks
It was noted in a prior post that there is a great diversity of research frameworks in the social sciences, and that there is much to be gained by attempting to understand the social processes through which these frameworks change and develop over time (link). Is it possible to get more specific about how the …
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Debates about field experiments in the social sciences
Questions about the empirical validation of hypotheses about social causation have been of interest in the past several weeks here. Relevant to that question is Dawn Langan Teele's recent volume, Field Experiments and Their Critics: Essays on the Uses and Abuses of Experimentation in the Social Sciences. The essays in the book make for interesting …
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Mechanisms, experiments, and policies
The social mechanisms approach to the social sciences aligns well with two key intellectual practices, experiments and policies. In an experiment we are interesting in testing whether a given factor has the effect it is thought to have. In a policy design we are interested in affecting an outcome of interest by manipulating some of …
George and Bennett on case study methodology
Establishing causal relationships within the fabric of the social world is more challenging than in the biological or physical-chemical domains. The reasons for this difficulty are familiar — the high degree of contextuality and contingency that is characteristic of social change, the non-deterministic character of social causation, and the fact that most social outcomes are …
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Geddes on methods
Earlier posts have examined some recent thinking about social science methods (link, link). Here I will examine another recent contributor to this field, Barbara Geddes. Geddes is a specialist in comparative politics, and her 2003 Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics is a thoughtful contribution to the debate about how …
Understanding Society 