{"id":1206,"date":"2011-03-09T09:00:18","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T14:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=1206"},"modified":"2011-03-08T20:18:24","modified_gmt":"2011-03-09T01:18:24","slug":"more-on-math-in-the-social-sciences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/1206","title":{"rendered":"Math in the Social Sciences, Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a <a title=\"Math in the Social Sciences, with Discussion\" href=\"http:\/\/brokeringclosure.wordpress.com\/2011\/03\/08\/math-in-the-social-sciences-with-discussion\/\" target=\"_blank\">post<\/a> over at Brokering the Closure &#8212; which sounds like the name of a post-rock group, much like Ed Carr&#8217;s <a title=\"Open the Echo Chamber\" href=\"www.edwardrcarr.com\/opentheechochamber\/\" target=\"_blank\">Open the Echo Chamber<\/a> blog &#8212;\u00a0Micha\u0142 Bojanowski aggregates the discussion that has taken place so far on the use of mathematics in the social sciences:<!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8220;My subjective list of advantages of formal theory building in social sciences (&#8230;):<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">1. If a theory is, among other things, a logically coherent set of propositions then formalizing it is just a translation to a language that makes analyzing it, especially deducing consequences, much easier. And this applies to whatever the subject of the theory is.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">2. Most of the empirical studies in sociology are analyzed using some form of statistical reasoning, which is mathematical. Given that, building a formal theory of the studied phenomenon should in principle allow for a tighter connection theory and empirics (c.f.\u00a0<em>The Theory-Gap in Social Network Analysis<\/em> by Mark Granovetter).<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">3. I would also add the \u201caccumulativeness\u201d, much in the line of\u00a0<em>Formal Rational Choice Theory: A Cumulative Science of Politics<\/em> by\u00a0\u00a0David Lalman, Joe Oppenheimer, and Piotr Swistak. Although, I have to admit, after having spent 5 years or so studying mathematical sociology and selective works from mathematical economics, the cumulation is sometimes difficult to observe from a local point of view and local time scale of individual researcher. Perhaps it is just time\u2026 or the researcher\u2026&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The post also aggregates some recent posts in the blogosphere about the supposed death of theoretical economics which, much like <a title=\"Mark Twain\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mark_twain\" target=\"_blank\">that other Mark<\/a>, I feel is greatly exaggerated&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a post over at Brokering the Closure &#8212; which sounds like the name of a post-rock group, much like Ed Carr&#8217;s Open the Echo<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/1206\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Math in the Social Sciences, Redux<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-methods","category-social-sciences","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-js","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1218,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions\/1218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}