A dynamic system problem in religious group growth and survival

Series
Dynamical Systems Working Seminar
Time
Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - 2:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Tongzhou Chen – GT Math
Organizer
Jiaqi Yang
We model and analyze the dynamics of religious group membership and size. A groups is distinguished by its strictness, which determines how much time group members are expected to spend contributing to the group. Individuals differ in their rate of return for time spent outside of their religious group. We construct a utility function that individ- uals attempt to maximize, then find a Nash Equilibrium for religious group participation with a heterogeneous population. We then model dynamics of group size by including birth, death, and switching of individuals between groups. Group switching depends on the strictness preferences of individuals and their probability of encountering members of other groups.