Kurzbeschreibung

This revised book teaches humanities majors the accessibility and beauty of discrete and deductive mathematics. It assumes no prior knowledge of either college-level mathematics or political science, and could be offered at the freshman or sophomore level.

Beschreibung

As a text for an undergraduate mathematics course for nonmajors, Mathematics and Politics requires no prerequisites in either area while the underlying philosophy involves minimizing algebraic computations and focusing instead on some conceptual aspects of mathematics in the context of important real-world questions in political science.
Five major topics are covered including a model of escalation, game theoretic models of international conflict, yes-no voting systems, political power, and social choice. Each topic is discussed in an introductory chapter and revisited in more depth in a later chapter. This new edition has added co-author, Allison Pacelli, and two new chapters on "Fairness" and "More Fairness." The examples and the exercises have been updated and enhanced throughout.
Reviews from first edition:
This book is well written and has much math of interest. While it is pitched at a non-math audience there is material here that will be new and interesting to the readers...
-Sigact News
For mathematicians, Taylor's book shows how the social sciences make use of mathematical thinking, in the form of axiomatic systems, and offers a chance to teach this kind of thinking to our students.
- The College Mathematics Journal
The writing is crisp and the sense of excitement about learning mathematics is seductive. The political conflict examples are well thought out and clear.
-Michael C. Munger

Inhaltsangabe

Social Choice.- Yes No Voting.- Political Power.- Conflict.- Fairness.- Escalation.- More Social Choice.- More Yes No Voting.- More Political Power.- More Conflict.- More Fairness.- More Escalation.

Klappentext

Why would anyone bid $3. 25 in an auction where the prize is a single dollar bill? Can one game explain the apparent irrationality behind both the arms race of the 1980s and the libretto of Puccini s opera Tosca? How can one calculation suggest the president has 4 percent of the power in the United States federal system while another s- gests that he or she controls 77 percent? Is democracy (in the sense of re?ecting the will of the people) impossible? Questionslikethesequitesurprisinglyprovideaveryniceforumfor some fundamental mathematical activities: symbolic representation and manipulation, model theoretic analysis, quantitative represen- tionandcalculation, anddeductionasembodiedinthepresentationof mathematical proof as convincing argument. We believe that an ex- sure to aspects of mathematics such as these should be an integral part of a liberal arts education. Our hope is that this book will serve as a text for freshman-sophomore level courses, aimed primarily at students in the humanities and social sciences, that will provide this sort of exposure. A number of colleges and universities already have interdisciplinary freshman seminars where this could take place. Most mathematics texts for nonscience majors try to show that mathematics can be applied to many different disciplines. A student s viii PREFACE interest in a particular application, however, often depends on his or hergeneralinterestintheareainwhichtheapplicationistakingplace. Our experience at Union College and Williams College has been that there is a real advantage in having students enter the course knowing that virtually all the applications will focus on a single discipline in this case, political science.