Cogprints

Against the inappropriate use of numerical representation in social simulation

Edmonds, Dr Bruce (2004) Against the inappropriate use of numerical representation in social simulation. [Departmental Technical Report] (Unpublished)

Full text available as:

[img]
Preview
PDF
154Kb
[img] HTML
69Kb

Abstract

All tools have their advantages and disadvantages and for all tools there are times when they are appropriate and times when they are not. Formal tools are no exception to this and systems of numbers are examples of such formal tools. Thus there will be occasions where using a number to represent something is helpful and times where it is not. To use a tool well one needs to understand that tool and, in particular, when it may be inadvisable to use it and what its weaknesses are. However we are in an age that it obsessed by numbers. Governments spend large amounts of money training its citizens in how to use numbers and their declarative abstractions (graphs, algebra etc.) We are surrounded by numbers every day in: the news, whether forecasts, our speedometers and our bank balance. We are used to using numbers in loose, almost “conversational” ways – as with such concepts as the rate of inflation and our own “IQ”. Numbers have become so famliar that we no more worry about when and why we use them than we do about natural language. We have lost the warning bells in our head that remind us that we may be using numbers inappropriately. They have entered (and sometimes dominate) our language of thought. Computers have exasperbated this trend by making numbers very much easier to store/manipulate/communicate and more seductive by making possible attractive pictures and animations of their patterns. More subtley, when thought of as calculating machines that can play games with us and simulate the detail of physical systems, they suggest that everything comes down to numbers. For this reason it is second nature for us to use numbers in our social simulations and we frequently do so without considering the consequences of this choice. This paper is simply a reminder about numbers: a call to remember that they are just another (formal) tool; it recaps some of the conditions which indicate when a number is applicable and when it might be misleading; it looks at some of the dangers and pitfalls of using numbers; it considers some examples of the use of numbers; and it points out that we now have some viable alternatives to numbers that are not any less formal but which may be often preferable.

Item Type:Departmental Technical Report
Keywords:numbers, measurement theory, social simulation, philosophy of science
Subjects:Psychology > Social Psychology > Social simulation
Philosophy > Philosophy of Science
ID Code:4262
Deposited By: Edmonds, Dr Bruce
Deposited On:20 Apr 2005
Last Modified:11 Mar 2011 08:55

References in Article

Select the SEEK icon to attempt to find the referenced article. If it does not appear to be in cogprints you will be forwarded to the paracite service. Poorly formated references will probably not work.

Edmonds, B. (2000) The Purpose and Place of Formal Systems in the Development of Science, CPM Report 00-75, MMU, UK. (http://cfpm.org/cpmrep75.html)

Edmonds, B. (2002) Simplicity is Not Truth-Indicative. CPM Report 02-00, MMU, 2002 (http://cfpm.org/cpmrep99.html).

Edmonds, B. (2003). Towards an ideal social simulation language. In Sichman, J. et al (eds.), Multi-Agent-Based Simulation II: 3rd Int. Workshop, (MABS02), Revised Papers, pages 104-124, Springer, LNAI, 2581.

Edmonds, B. and Hales, D. (2003a) Computational Simulation as Theoretical Experiment, CPM report 03-106, MMU, 2003 (http://cfpm.org/cpmrep106.html).

Edmonds, B. and Hales, D. (2003b) Replication, Replication and Replication - Some Hard Lessons from Model Alignment. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 6(4) (http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/6/4/11.html)

Amblard, F. Weisbuch, G. and Deffuant, G. (2003), The drift to a single extreme appears only beyond a critical connectivity of the social networks - Study of the relative agreement opinion dynamics on small world networks. 1st International Conference of the European Society for Social Simulation (ESSA 2003), Groningen, September 2003.

Giere R., N. (1988). Explaining science : a cognitive approach. Chicago ; London, University of Chicago Press.

Gigerenzer, G. and D. G. Goldstein (1996). "Reasoning the fast and frugal way: Models of bounded rationality." Psychological Review 104: 650-669.

Gödel, K. (1930) Die Vollständigkeit der Axiome des logischen Funktionen-kalküls, Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik 37, 349-360.

Hemelrijk, C. K. (2003) Social phenomena emerging by self-organisation in a competitive, virtual world (‘DomWorld’). 1st International Conference of the European Society for Social Simulation (ESSA 2003), Groningen, September 2003.

Krantz, D. H., Luce, R. D., Suppes, P., and Tversky, A. (1971). Foundations of measurement. (Vol. I: Additive and polynomial representations.). New York: Academic Press.

Luce, R. D., Krantz, D. H., Suppes, P., and Tversky, A. (1990). Foundations of measurement. (Vol. III: Representation, axiomatization, and invariance). New York: Academic Press.

Polhill, J. G. Luis R. Izquierdo, & Nicholas M. Gotts - The Ghost in the Model (and other effects of floating point arithmetic) 1st International Conference of the European Society for Social Simulation (ESSA 2003), Groningen, September 2003.

Riolo, R. L., Cohen, M. D. and Axelrod, R (2001), Evolution of cooperation without reciprocity. Nature, 411:441-443.

Sarle, W. S. (1997) Measurement theory: Frequently asked questions, Version 3, Sep 14, 1997. (Accessed 22/01/04) ftp://ftp.sas.com/pub/neural/measurement.html

Shannon, C. E. and W. Weaver (1949). The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana, Illinois, University of Illinois Press.

Stevens, S. S. (1946), On the theory of scales of measurement. Science, 103:677-680.

Suppes, P., Krantz, D. H., Luce, R. D., and Tversky, A. (1989). Foundations of measurement. (Vol. II: Geometrical, threshold, and probabilistic respresentations). New York: Academic Press.

Whitehead, A. N. and Russell, B. (1962) Principia mathematica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (originally published 1913).

Metadata

Repository Staff Only: item control page