He had degrees in mathematics and chemistry and an extensive background in physics (Albert Einstein was one of his teachers). It took a Hungarian polymath, John von Neumann, to make the connection between high-level math and human actions, and thus let social scientists begin to delineate patterns in seemingly varied human behavior. Modeling had its uses, but scholars believed those were confined to the natural world.
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It’s similar to weather forecasting or predicting how fish stocks will hold up over a span of years.įor a long time, no scientist thought this kind of mathematical modeling could accurately apply to the human mind or to society.
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They first test their mathematical model against known facts: Using older data, does it correctly “predict” the events that actually happened in the past? When it can pass that test, they give it current information to try to predict what is likely to occur in the future. With that knowledge, social scientists build a model-a set of equations that describes the workings of those forces. The key to the new method is to sift through a rich trove of fact and find the few that reveal the essential underlying forces at work. These social-scientific methods supply the data that ground abstract mathematical modeling in reality. Often, that information is gathered using the longstanding tools of political science: systematic surveys to reveal individuals’ beliefs, extensive interviewing of stakeholders (or experts on the stakeholders) to illuminate their strategic interests, analysis of data to discover the economic underpinnings of conflicts, and extensive archival research to grasp the historical background of a conflict. For the method to work, however, researchers need both detailed and accurate data about the conflict they seek to understand as well as a functional model that can make predictions about possible future events.
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#Atomic society enemies drivers
In the same way, social scientists can see underlying causes beneath surface differences in human interactions and can represent these fundamental drivers in mathematical formulas. Looking at a position, they can often predict what each side must do, based on their knowledge of the underlying principles of the game. Yet expert players know the principles that make for effective moves. The result has been dramatic progress in the nation’s ability to protect its interests at home and abroad.Ĭonsider all the possible moves available in a game of chess-more than the number of atoms in the universe, which is why each match a person plays feels unlike any other. He told me that I was wasting my time.” It took researchers many years of patient work, putting piece after piece of the puzzle of human behavior together, to arrive at today’s new knowledge. “In the mid-1960s, I took a statistics course,” he recalls, “and my undergraduate advisor was appalled. The advances in solving the puzzle of human behavior represent a dramatic turnaround for the field of political science, notes Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a professor of politics at New York University. And at Los Angeles International Airport a computer system predicts the tactical calculations of criminals and terrorists, making sure that patrols and checkpoints are placed in ways that adversaries can’t exploit.
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government to predict the fall of President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines in 1986, helping hatch a strategy to ease him out of office and avoid political chaos in that nation. Political scientists have now added rigorous mathematical techniques to their social-science toolbox, creating methods to explain-and even predict-the actions of adversaries, thus making society safer as well as smarter. But when it comes to the human side of conflict-decisions people make about when, how, and why to use these tools-professionals saw little place for the precise language of mathematics. Equations ensure missiles land on the right target, combat materials hold up on the battlefield, and secrets stay locked in code. From the time of quills and cannons to our era of cyber-attacks and drone warfare, mathematics has been crucial to national security.