Promotional Information

This book eloquently captures the excitement of understanding natural and social phenomena by recreating them in computer simulations. The agent-based approach championed here provides deeply satisfying scientific explanations because it provides a bridge between levels of description, showing how high-level, macroscopic properties, such as crystal formation, tumor shape, flocking, population cycles, social coordination, and transportation networks, can spontaneously emerge from lower-level interactions among agents rather than being explicitly programmed into a model. When combined with active exploration using Uri Wilensky's free and widely used NetLogo programming environment, reading this book equips students and researchers with a new language for generating and expressing scientific theories. -- Robert Goldstone, Chancellor's Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University Bloomington A clear, comprehensive, and up-to-date introduction. This is the best book out there for learning (or teaching) the art and science of agent-based modeling. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in this essential area of complex systems science. -- Melanie Mitchell, Professor, Portland State University and the Santa Fe Institute; author of Complexity: A Guided Tour This outstanding book offers a tour d'horizon of agent-based modeling for students, teachers, and scientists at all levels, using NetLogo, the 'low-threshold/unknown-ceiling' language developed by Uri Wilensky. With this Introduction to Agent-Based Modeling, he and William Rand have set the standard for textbooks on this topic. An essential contribution. -- Joshua M. Epstein, Johns Hopkins University and the Santa Fe Institute

About the Author

Uri Wilensky is Professor of Learning Sciences, Computer Science, and Complex Systems at Northwestern University and Director of the Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling there. He is the author of the NetLogo language.

William Rand isExecutive Director of Business Analytics Initiative and Associate Professor of Marketing at North Carolina State University.