Joseph Whitmeyer
Biographic Data
| ID | 4271010 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joseph Whitmeyer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joseph |
| FAMILY NAME | Whitmeyer |
| SIGNATURE | WHITMEYER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Charlotte |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 5 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 5 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
What makes a good social science theory, and why the evolutionary model of the actor is one
This paper presents the rules of science in general as the rules of social science and describes what makes a good theory in both science generally and social science specifically. We argue that good theory in science and social science can both explain and predict. Scientific theory at any level of analysis consists of deductively connected models of processes, and these processes and the entities they involve almost always are ideal types. Good…
Steady states of lattice population models with immigration
In a lattice population model where individuals evolve as subcritical branching random walks subject to external immigration, the cumulants are estimated and the existence of the steady state is proved. The resulting dynamics are Lyapunov stable in that their qualitative behavior does not change under suitable perturbations of the main parameters of the model. An explicit formula of the limit distribution is derived in the solvable case of no bir…
Baseline models of spatial population dynamics
To understand human population dynamics fully, before considering complex human agency it may be useful to construct baseline models to see where such agency may and may not be necessary. In fact, the dynamics of human populations may be amenable to mathematical modeling with relatively parsimonious mechanisms. We review some of the more prominent of such models, namely, the spatial Galton-Watson (GW) model, modifications of the GW model that add…
The Size of a Political Club
We investigate the size of a political club that admits new members according to a rule that if only a few members vote against admission the candidate joins, but the members who voted against admission leave. For the simplest ergodic case, we use a modified Bessel function to give the generating function for the invariant distribution of the club size. This also allows us to give asymptotics for the moments as the probability of voting for admis…
The Perils of Assuming a Single Equilibrium
Most techniques sociologists use to analyze empirical phenomena make the single equilibrium assumption that a given configuration of independent variables will produce a single outcome. The author uses two simple models to show that when the assumption does not hold, such techniques may be inadequate. The assumption, moreover, may not be valid for many social phenomena. To show this, the author takes two recent published examples of work that ass…
What makes a good social science theory, and why the evolutionary model of the actor is one
This paper presents the rules of science in general as the rules of social science and describes what makes a good theory in both science generally and social science specifically. We argue that good theory in science and social science can both explain and predict. Scientific theory at any level of analysis consists of deductively connected models of processes, and these processes and the entities they involve almost always are ideal types. Good…
Baseline models of spatial population dynamics
To understand human population dynamics fully, before considering complex human agency it may be useful to construct baseline models to see where such agency may and may not be necessary. In fact, the dynamics of human populations may be amenable to mathematical modeling with relatively parsimonious mechanisms. We review some of the more prominent of such models, namely, the spatial Galton-Watson (GW) model, modifications of the GW model that add…
The Perils of Assuming a Single Equilibrium
Most techniques sociologists use to analyze empirical phenomena make the single equilibrium assumption that a given configuration of independent variables will produce a single outcome. The author uses two simple models to show that when the assumption does not hold, such techniques may be inadequate. The assumption, moreover, may not be valid for many social phenomena. To show this, the author takes two recent published examples of work that ass…
The Size of a Political Club
We investigate the size of a political club that admits new members according to a rule that if only a few members vote against admission the candidate joins, but the members who voted against admission leave. For the simplest ergodic case, we use a modified Bessel function to give the generating function for the invariant distribution of the club size. This also allows us to give asymptotics for the moments as the probability of voting for admis…
Baseline models of spatial population dynamics
To understand human population dynamics fully, before considering complex human agency it may be useful to construct baseline models to see where such agency may and may not be necessary. In fact, the dynamics of human populations may be amenable to mathematical modeling with relatively parsimonious mechanisms. We review some of the more prominent of such models, namely, the spatial Galton-Watson (GW) model, modifications of the GW model that add…
Steady states of lattice population models with immigration
In a lattice population model where individuals evolve as subcritical branching random walks subject to external immigration, the cumulants are estimated and the existence of the steady state is proved. The resulting dynamics are Lyapunov stable in that their qualitative behavior does not change under suitable perturbations of the main parameters of the model. An explicit formula of the limit distribution is derived in the solvable case of no bir…
What makes a good social science theory, and why the evolutionary model of the actor is one
This paper presents the rules of science in general as the rules of social science and describes what makes a good theory in both science generally and social science specifically. We argue that good theory in science and social science can both explain and predict. Scientific theory at any level of analysis consists of deductively connected models of processes, and these processes and the entities they involve almost always are ideal types. Good…
Computer Science (3 works) · Mathematics (3 works) · Sociology (3 works) · Demography (2 works) · Econometrics (2 works) · Economics (2 works) · Epistemology (2 works) · Geography (2 works) · Mathematical economics (2 works) · Philosophy (2 works)