Title :
Agentizing the social science of crime
Author :
Wilcox, Steven P.
Author_Institution :
Serco Inc., Reston, VA, USA
Abstract :
Using the subject matter of neighborhood crime, we explore how to conduct conventional quantitative social science using simulation as a way of formulating theory and performing empirical tests of theory, thus replacing the dominant methodological paradigm. Here we simulate in abstract form a complete system of social relationships to reflect applicable social theory, which in many cases takes the form of prose. This requires integrating the theories and adding implied elements to make a coherent, parameterized system. The next step is calibrating the model to measures of the type that would be normally employed to test the relevant theories. Re-implementing Wilcox´s (2005) Matlab-based crime model in Java and exploring model variations, we find patterns in the simulation outputs that highlight the potential difficulties of matching a published correlation matrix and are reminded that simulation modeling is more exacting than social science argument stated as prose and based on group-level conceptual constructs.
Keywords :
Java; correlation methods; criminal law; digital simulation; social sciences computing; Java; Matlab-based crime model; coherent parameterized system; correlation matrix matching; model variations; neighborhood crime; simulation modeling; social relationships; social science; social theory; Analytical models; Biological system modeling; Computational modeling; Data models; Economics; Mathematical model; Social network services;
Conference_Titel :
Simulation Conference (WSC), Proceedings of the 2011 Winter
Conference_Location :
Phoenix, AZ
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4577-2108-3
Electronic_ISBN :
0891-7736
DOI :
10.1109/WSC.2011.6147761