Essential mathematics for political and social research

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Sadri Hassani

"This book presents a large number of numerical topics and exercises together with discussions of methods for solving such problems using Mathematica. The accompanying CD-ROM contains Mathematica Notebooks for illustrating most of the topics in the text and for solving problems in mathematical physics." "Although is it primarily designed for use with the author's Mathematical Methods: For Students of Physics and Related Fields, the discussions in the book are sufficiently self-contained that the book can be used as a supplement to any of the standard textbooks in mathematical methods for undergraduate students of physical sciences or engineering."--Jacket.

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Robert Schoen

Dynamic Population Models is the first book to comprehensively discuss and synthesize the emerging field of dynamic modeling, i.e. the analysis and application of population models that have changing vital rates. Incorporating the latest research, it includes thorough discussions of population growth and momentum under gradual fertility declines, the impact of changes in the timing of events on fertility measures, and the complex relationship between period and cohort measures. Recently developed models for the analysis of changing mortality are examined, and generalizations of Lotka’s fixed rate stable population model are developed and applied. The book is well organized and clearly written so that it is accessible to those with only a minimal knowledge of calculus. It begins with a review of fixed rate population models, from the basic life table to multistate stable populations. The process of convergence to stability is described, and the regularities underlying change in the size and composition of any population are explored. Techniques for estimating rates from multistate population distributions are presented, and new multi-age, multistate dynamic models are developed. Building on the logical closure of demographic models and the close relationship between population stocks and flows, the book sets forth the latest approaches for capturing population change in a world experiencing profound demographic transformations.

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Maurice A. Finocchiaro

Two Italian writers, Gaetano Mosca and Antonio Gramsci, have been very influential in twentieth-century political thought, the first cast as a thoroughgoing conservative, the second as the model of a humanistic Marxist. The author of this provocative book, the first systematic study of the connection between the two men, maintains that they are closer to each other than is commonly supposed-that they in fact belong to the same political tradition of democratic elitism. Maurice A. Finocchiaro argues that Gramsci's political theory is a constructive critique of Mosca's and that the key common element is the attempt to combine democracy and elitism in a theoretical system that defines them not as opposite but as compatible and interdependent. Finocchiaro finds that a critical examination of the major works of the two men demonstrates their shared belief in the viability of democratic elitism and undermines the importance of the distinction between right and left.

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Eleonora Bilotta and Pietro Pantano

"The theme of this book is the use of Cellular Automatas (CAs) to model biological systems, describing 2-D CAs to create populations of "life-like agents" with their own genomes"--Provided by publisher.