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Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up
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Author: Joshua M. Epstein, Robert L. Axtell
List Price: $65.00
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0262050536
Publisher: MIT Press (15 November, 1996)
Edition: Hardcover
Sales Rank: 498,903
Average Customer Rating: 2.5 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 4 out of 5
Good intro to agent sims.
Granted, this is not a cookbook for creating the simulations described. However, it gives a good picture of the power of agent simulations, and shows the basics of behavior modeling. In this respect, it is an excellent text. I would suggest it for an advanced undergrad course, rather than graduate level.
Rating: 2 out of 5
An enormous disappointment
This book is an opportunity missed. The subject is interesting (and contrary to the views of another reviewer, I think there is valuable research being done here).The model seems to be well thought out, although its very limited scope (a 50 by 50 playing field) makes me almost sure the results can have little meaning. I was continuously troubled by the fact that they described their world as a torus (wrap-around like a doughnut) but none of the illustrations supported this. I didn't buy the version with the CD-ROM, but frankly, I'm glad I saved my money. Moreover, at almost every paragraph, I felt the authors had contrived the result they desired. For a much more stimulating read, try "Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams : Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds" by Mitchel Resnick,
Rating: 2 out of 5
Good simulation, poor basis, riddled with errors
This book was part of a graduate research class I was in. We built thier simulation from the ground up, but found many errors and simulation artifacts with in the book. Though the simulation was a very good one, they left or ignored key details, and the book only discusses the conceptual model. Building the model from the information in the book can be an exercise in futility. They do not give much detail, and what they do give, they hide within footnotes and seperate critical information with pages of analysis. The alanysis unfortunately doesn't talk about model deficiencies and other simulation artifacts the modelers introduced. In the end, an excellent simulation, regardless of how they put it together, and the errors their model injected into it.
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