Real-World Probability Books: Society
Gladwell, Malcolm.
The Tipping Point: How little things can make a big difference
Little, Brown 2000.
Fascinating collection of stories on the theme of how small changes
in human society/behavior can make a big difference, in contexts of crime, fashion, rumors, etc.
No explicit math, but the "Endnotes" refer to more scholarly work.
Good source for reading projects.
Philip Ball.
Critical Mass: How one thing leads to another.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.
The theme is statistical physics style models of interacting agents -- "how patterns of behavior
emerge from the statistical melee of many individuals doing their own idiosyncratic thing: helping
or swindling each other, cooperating or conflicting, following the crowd or blazing heir own trail".
Contains verbal descriptions of around ten specific models (e.g. for vehicle and pedestrian traffic;
for alliance formation or cultural dissemination; for peer pressure effect on criminality; for company size
being determined by individual employees income-leisure preferences).
And contains summaries of classical theories. Easy to read, as befits a professional science writer.
But (to my taste) too much grandiose theorizing and too much credulity regarding significance or
impact of these models.
John H. Miller and Scott E. Page.
Complex Adaptive Systems: An introduction to computational models of social life.
Princeton University Press, 2007.
Useful descriptions of a range of mathematical models, some involving probability
(though not as primary emphasis).
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas.
The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable.
Random House, 2007.
Review in progress .......
Watts, Duncan J.
Six Degrees.
The science of a connected age.
W.W. Norton, 2003.
Presents general background to social networks - how ideas, information or epidemics spread between people.
Gives brief indications of some math models in this field, so
a good source for reading projects.
But exaggerates the significance of this kind of analysis.
Back to complete book list.