# About Thomas Crombie Schelling[1]

(born 14 April 1921) is an American economist and professor of foreign affairs, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control at the School of Public Policy at University of Maryland, College Park. He is also co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute.
He was awarded the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with Robert Aumann) for “having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.”

# Schelling Segregation

In 1969, he published a widely cited article dealing with racial dynamics called “Models of Segregation”[2].
In this paper he showed that a small preference for one’s neighbors to be of the same color could lead to total segregation. He used coins on graph paper to demonstrate his theory by placing pennies and nickels in different patterns on the “board” and then moving them one by one if they were in an “unhappy” situation.
The positive feedback cycle of segregation – prejudice – in-group preference can be found in most human populations, with great variation in what are regarded as meaningful differences – gender, age, race, ethnicity, language, sexual preference, religion, etc. Once a cycle of separation-prejudice-discrimination-separation has begun, it has a self-sustaining momentum.

# Schelling Segregation Algorithm Using MASON [3]

This is a variation of Thomas Schelling’s Segregation Model.
We model two groups of people: Red and Blue.
Each person prefers that there be at least threshold number of like-colored people living within neighborhood distance away from him.
If this is not the case, he will get up and move to another location.
In our version of the model, when a person wishes to move, he picks a random empty location to move to.

View the video simulation here: http://www.youtube.com/hatmayang

# References

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schelling
[2] Schelling, T. (1969). Models of segregation. The American Economic Review, 59(2), 488-493.
[3] http://cs.gmu.edu/~eclab/projects/mason/

Read the details here: http://hatmaandnovi.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Thomas-Schellings-Segregation-Model.pdf

Download complete files and source code here: http://www.uploadjockey.com/download/7053193/Schelling_Segregation.zip