is this the mathematical sociology book i’ve been looking for?

If you want to learn mathematical sociology, you don’t have many good options. There are very few math soc courses. Or you can do a math intensive area and then pick up various journals. Or you can pick up books, many of which are out of date. I remember being in grad school and reading Coleman ’64. Good for its time, but terribly outdated. But I’ve found a solution. James Montgomery, a Wisconsin soc prof/econ PhD, has a very nice website with his math soc course notes. The lectures will be a text book. I say it hits the right note. It has classical math soc, like influence models and Markov chains, but newer stuff like cultural evolution models and segregation dynamics.

My only criticism is that it exclusively focuses on computational models and solving particulat models and less on theorem proving. As I’ve suggested before, math soc has enough computational models, but we need to build a core set of “classic math soc theorems” that define the field, in the same way the microeconomics is built around a set of equilibrium theorems. Aside from that, I recommend that people interested in math soc read this website. I hope to buy the book one day.

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