Product Description
As the need for more substantial mathematical training has increased among social science students, the lack of any adequate textbook between the very elementary and the very advanced levels has become crucial. The authors, long-time experts in this field, have answered the need with this volume, and the MIT Press has repsonded by bringing it into renewed circulation.

Mathematical Models in the Social Sciences investigates and teaches the formation and analysis of mathematical models with detailed interpretations of the results. These models are self-contained, with the necessary mathematics included in each chapter. A vast range of topics in the social sciences and a wide variety of mathematical techniques are covered by the models. Ample opportunity is also provided for the students to form their own models. Republication of this book provides social science and mathematics students with a text that is the analogue of mathematical methods textbooks used in the study of the physical sciences and engineering. Prerequisites are kept to a minimum; a course in finite mathematics and a semester of calculus are all that is necessary.

The chapters cover these main topics (and employ the mathematical approach parenthetically indicated): methodology; preference rankings (an axiomatic approach); ecology (two dynamic models); market stability (a dynamic model); a Markov chain model in sociology; stabilization of money flow (an application of discrete potential theory); branching processes; organization theory (applications of graph theory); and optimal scheduling (a problem in dynamic programming). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great introduction on finite markov chain
I bought this book to re-learn finite markov chain, because previously I used another book that is not very good. The good points of this book: does not assume too much mathematical background; classifies the states of finite markov chains and also the types of finite markov chains early on, so that I have a clear picture of what to expect in later chapters; most theorems are proved, though sometimes it needs reader's active participation to digest the proof; the proofs does not need advanced mathematics.

After reading this book, I think I have adequate grasp of finite markov chains that I can start learning general state space discrete time markov chains. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Still one of the best
If you start learning BASIC from this book, like I did, you never realize how bad all the others are.Even back in the day (70's), this was the highest rated intro book on BASIC by Byte & Creative Computing magazines. Lots of interesting example programs, clever algorithms, and written by the people who invented BASIC."Basic Basic" and "Advanced Basic" by Coan are a close second to this book.Buy all three and forget the rest.

My first programming course in September 1976
used this one and that made me fall in love with computers.

It's only useful as nostalgia now... ... Read more

Product Description
After introducing the ideas of programming in the first eleven chapters, the book describes many algorithms and programs from a number of fields - simulation, modeling, business, mathematics, music and so on. The student can thus see how the algorithmic processes from those fields can be successfully transcribed into computer programs. And this book teaches the writing of large programs as an aspect of problem-solving by concentrating on the notion of a subroutine and on collections of external subroutines called libraries as well as on the notion of a leveled design sometimes referred to as a 'top-down' design. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Old but relevant book for learning True BASIC
In 1964, the BASIC programming language got its start as Dartmouth BASIC, so named because it was designed and implemented at Dartmouth College by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. BASIC was invented to give Dartmouth students in the Arts a simple programming language that was easy-to-learn. BASIC was cooked up to let operators sitting at remote terminals write and run programs interactively instead of serially, a single job at a time, wherein punched cards were fed in batches to a computer in s room filled with large equipment. Consequently, Dartmouth BASIC is best known for giving computer programming a human face and making it accessible to everyone. Teletype teleprinters were used as the terminal units of choice for the innovative Dartmouth Time Sharing System.

Twenty years later, three years after the birth of the IBM personal computer, True BASIC was developed by the same John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. They hoped it would supplant Bill Gates' Microsoft BASIC which they regarded as a corruption of their brain child, Dartmouth BASIC. Incidentally, when the street fight was over, Bill Gates' "corrupt" version of Microsoft BASIC, later QuickBASIC, and finally Visual BASIC, emerged as the winner, not True BASIC.

Structured BASIC Programming (1987) was written by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz as a textbook for an introductory course in BASIC. It is assumed that students either will be in possession of or will have access to a True BASIC reference manual, True BASIC being the version of BASIC used in this book. It is also assumed that the readers of this book are reasonably competent in high school algebra.

The emphasis in this book is on algorithms and problem-solving. The book is divided into four parts: (1) Introduction to Programming, (2) Text Applications, (3) Mathematical Applications, and (4) Other Applications. Part One should be studied in its entirety before moving on to the rest of the book. Parts Two, Three, & Four can be read in any order.

The book also stresses the use of subroutines, both internal and external, for building reusable libraries of code. DO-LOOP and SELECT-CASE are promoted in the place of the GOTO statement for creating structured BASIC programs. Mathematical applications are enhanced by the presence of True BASIC's powerful MAT statements for matrix manipulation, a capability that is missing from all versions of Microsoft BASIC. Some of the "Other Applications" in Part Four include business applications, game applications, and graphics applications with animation and music.

As this review is being written, forty-six years have passed since BASIC was given life. Its direct descendant, True BASIC, is still in use in spite of its usurpers and detractors. At True BASIC's internet site [...] you will find web pages devoted to Free Demos, Products, Support, FAQ, Schools, Books, Polls, and What's New. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Kemeny Points the Way
I read this book when I was seventeen years old, battling the demons of art and science, wondering if there was a connection between both those seemingly incompatible worlds. The book confirmed my decision to go to Dartmouth, where, as it happened, I spent four years studying in the math building, even though I was a liberal arts major. I simply liked the vibe and John Kemeny's presence. He was there, hovering about, checking on everybody and making the math department at the college the best in the country, building the first computer center, and with Thomas Kurtz, inventing for all of us the BASIC programming language. One time when he encountered me he asked what I was doing reading "Lolita," one of the books required in my American literature course, in *his* math building. I said, "Well, I want to be a writer and a computer scientist, to master the language of Nabokov and the thinking of Kemeny. I want to stand on the shoulders of giants." Kemeny smiled and shook his head, as if to say, "You've got your work cut out for you, young man." Which was true: it took me about one hundred years to do what I'm doing now: writing software code and technical documentation at Apple Inc and, nights and weekends, writing one novel after another, always experimenting with language, voice and imagery.

-Tom Maremaa, Author of the Forthcoming novel "Metal Heads" from Kunati Books in Spring 2009 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very educational, very smooth, well written
I have been familiar with this book for over 8 years and I should say this is one of the best educational and practical books you can find about Markov chains. The book claims to be written for undergraduates, but it is marvelously useful for graduate students too.

The book starts by definition of Markov chains and gradually gets into more advanced definitions like absorbing states, cyclical chains, ergodicity ... Then there are these little lemmas and theorems about different aspects of Markov chains like what is the expected time of sitting at a transient state, what is the expected time of returning to the same state, etc. The proofs are nicely presented and there is a whole lot of application for those theorems in all fields that use Markov chains (like engineering, economics, ...). The book is actually abstract math and doesn't get very specialized at any time.

I think this is a book one wants to start learning Markov chains from or keep in shelf for frequent references. I actually used some of its derivations in my own Master's thesis and got a lot of interesting feedbacks on what I did. Now is your turn! ... Read more