Social Analysis and Modeling for Python

[Bengt Richter]

On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 11:37:08 -0400, Bishara Gabriel <bgabriel at cloudthunder.com> wrote:

>I encourage feedback from all parties and especially those which would 
>like to be directly involved (I may include you in the grant proposal 
>and budget).  Send me your comments!
>
>------->
>
>Project Objective
>
>We seek to introduce the advantages of object-oriented programming to
>the realm of social sciences.  We believe the fields thereof (economics,
>history, sociology, political science, etc.), have much to gain from
>OOP’s ability to represent social constructs.  Particularly, we have
>found Python to be well suited to the rapid formulation of social models
>due to its syntactic simplicity, outstanding support for object-oriented
>programming, and comprehensive libraries.  Unfortunately, most academics
>in the aforementioned fields are unaware of the capabilities, let alone
>applicability, of programmatic representation.  Those who do are
>typically put off by the inadequacy and complexity of more traditional
>languages such as C and C++.  We therefore propose to disseminate an
>understanding among these fields of the ability to develop social models
>and represent social constructs via the rapid modeling capabilities of
>the Python language.  We seek to demonstrate how Python presents to them
>limited costs in production time via its language features, and to show
>how social models can be mentally approached in such a way that there
>exists a one-to-one correlation between their theoretical model and the
>Python equivalent.
>
>See the rest of the proposal at:
>http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~bgabriel/Social_Analysis_&_Modeling_in_Python.pdf

I am sure Python can be a great tool, but why no citations re existing
"social models" that you mention? If you propose to "... show
how social models can be mentally approached in such a way that there
exists a one-to-one correlation between their theoretical model and the
Python equivalent," ISTM your proposal would sound more concrete if you
pointed to a specific "theoretical model" as your choice for a
how-to-do-it-with-Python demonstration.

Also citations of related work, and why your project adds value (besides
advertising our favorite language ;-)

Regards,
Bengt Richter