Can you imagine using simulation methods to teach history and social sciences to children? Agent based modeling have the huge potential to be used to teach people how small and simple pieces with well known behavior might relate in unexpected and not so simple ways. This is usually what we think happens in history, with towns, empires, leaders, taking decisions that take into account some of the information of their environment, but cannot see the whole picture, leading to unexpected consequences. To see this big picture retrospectively, scientists usually try to do models that require some skill in solving them, like solving systems of equations. However, as the models grow complex, scientists are having to turn back to the numerical methods.
This has a potential to make easier scientific divulgation for the common people. And don’t missunderstand me, I will always love the elegance of the analytical models. But it is quite a challenge to translate them for scientists into simple languaje, when you are interested not only on explaining the inputs and outputs, but also the intuiticon of the mechanics involved. But if programming becomes a widespread skill even for the young, the process of divulgation might turn to just helping people make toy models that mimick some important aspects of the real simulation scientists do. And with all the advantages this might bring, like gamifying the process of learning in interactive ways. For now, I am really curious on how this anthropologists and sociologists modeled this historical phenomena. I would love to learn to do things like that in Python. For more on this project, follow the hashtag #SimulationForDivulgation.
Text quoted in the image taken from: Macal, C; North, M. (2005). Tutorial on Agent Based Model and Simulation. Proceedings of the 2005 Winter Simulation Conference