Validation and Verification in Social Simulation: Patterns and Clarification of Terminology
Abstract
The terms ‘verification’ and ‘validation’ are widely used in science, both in the natural and the social sciences. They are extensively used in simulation, often associated with the need to evaluate models in different stages of the simulation development process. Frequently, terminological ambiguities arise when researchers conflate, along the simulation development process, the technical meanings of both terms with other meanings found in the philosophy of science and the social sciences. This article considers the problem of verification and validation in social science simulation along five perspectives: The reasons to address terminological issues in simulation; the meaning of the terms in the philosophical sense of the problem of “truth”; the observation that some debates about these terms in simulation are inadvertently more terminological than epistemological; the meaning of the terms in the technical context of the simulation development process; and finally, a comprehensive outline of the relation between terminology used in simulation, different types of models used in the development process and different epistemological perspectives.Author's Profile
My notes
Similar books and articles
Computer modeling and simulation: towards epistemic distinction between verification and validation.Vitaly Pronskikh - unknown
The Logic of the Method of Agent-Based Simulation in the Social Sciences: Empirical and Intentional Adequacy of Computer Programs.Nuno David, Jaime Sichman & Helder Coleho - 2005 - Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 8 (4).
Simulation as formal and generative social science: the very idea.Nuno David, Jaime Sichman & Helder Coelho - 2007 - In Carlos Gershenson, Diederik Aerts & Bruce Edmonds (eds.), Worldviews, Science, and Us: Philosophy and Complexity. World Scientific. pp. 266--275.
What does a Computer Simulation prove? The case of plant modeling at CIRAD.Franck Varenne - 2001 - In N. Giambiasi & C. Frydman (eds.), Simulation in industry - ESS 2001, Proc. of the 13th European Simulation Symposium. Society for Computer Simulation (SCS).
Toward a formalism of modeling and simulation using model theory.Saikou Y. Diallo, Jose J. Padilla, Ross Gore, Heber Herencia-Zapana & Andreas Tolk - 2014 - Complexity 19 (3):56-63.
Analysis of microtunnelling construction operations using process simulation.Thanh Dang Trung - unknown
Special issue on: Social simulation: The challenge of social simulation: an introduction to the special issue. [REVIEW]Flaminio Squazzoni - 2009 - Mind and Society 8 (2):131-134.
The World as a Process: Simulations in the Natural and Social Sciences.Stephan Hartmann - 1996 - In Rainer Hegselmann (ed.), Modelling and Simulation in the Social Sciences from the Philosophy of Science Point of View.
Agent-Based Simulation and Sociological Understanding.Petri Ylikoski - 2014 - Perspectives on Science 22 (3):318-335.
Social institution, cognition, and survival: a cognitive–social simulation.Ron Sun & Isaac Naveh - 2007 - Mind and Society 6 (2):115-142.
The Structure and Logic of Interdisciplinary Research in Agent-Based Social Simulation.Nuno David, Maria Marietto, Jaime Sichman & Helder Coelho - 2004 - Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 7 (3).
Analytics
Added to PP
2016-03-17
Downloads
703 (#12,623)
6 months
59 (#22,147)
2016-03-17
Downloads
703 (#12,623)
6 months
59 (#22,147)
Historical graph of downloads
Author's Profile
Citations of this work
Capturing the representational and the experimental in the modelling of artificial societies.David Anzola - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):1-29.
References found in this work
Downward causation.Donald T. Campbell - 1974 - In F. Ayala & T. Dobzhansky (eds.), Studies in the Philosophy of Biology. University of California Press. pp. 179--186.
Verification, Validation, and Confirmation of Numerical Models in the Earth Sciences.Naomi Oreskes, Kristin Shrader-Frechette & Kenneth Belitz - 1994 - Science 263 (5147):641-646.